The Exo's Secret
by NetRaptor
Summary: When Valis-2 awakens as a Guardian, he has the word Aestivalis scratched into his arm. He and his ghost join the Vanguard, but Valis brings with him the forbidden memories of a Golden Age weapon-a weapon that Rasputin the Warmind will kill to protect, even if it means infiltrating the tower himself.
1. Chapter 1

Mars: once lush and terraformed, now fading back into a red, dusty desert. Many of mankind's holdings there had been destroyed at the collapse of the Golden Age. Huge complexes that had once flourished in commerce and industry had faded into the red sands, leaving only irregular dunes behind, some of them miles high.

But there were ways inside, for the determined.

A single ghost wandered the ruins beneath the Martian surface. She was a little robot shaped like a star with a single blue eye in the center, and she'd been there a long time. But her patience was inexhaustible. Somewhere in these ruined rooms and collapsed passages lay the spark of her Guardian, an immortal warrior.

She had hunted him for nearly a year, now, and had mapped huge portions of the complex. It had once been part of a city with thousands of inhabitants. But they had fled the Darkness to die in the asteroid belt, leaving their grand city to rot and rust.

Why her Guardian had died here, the ghost had no idea. Had he failed to evacuate? Had he come here later to search for treasure or supplies, and met with some accident? The ghost had plenty of time to dream of his past, what he might be like. Or she - it was hard to tell from the distant song of a spark.

But finally, late one cold Martian night, the ghost wound her way into a collapsed building where her Guardian's remains lay.

He had been a male Exo, she saw at once - a robot body with a human mind uploaded to it. Despite lying some distance from the fallen roof and walls, half his metal body had been torn apart and scattered across the room. His remaining hand still gripped a metal pipe - possibly he had used it as a weapon. The pipe and the hand that held it had fused together with rust.

The ghost flew to and fro over her Guardian, kindling his spark with her own, studying the physical damage. Then she opened her shell and bonded her spark to his, making herself part of his very soul, giving herself the power to heal and resurrect him. She would be his closest friend in time to come.

But he couldn't return to life with his body in pieces. The ghost poured Light energy into the Exo body, rebuilding components from local quanta. She reassembled his chest, pelvis, right leg, and right arm, along with all synthetic organs. The hand that gripped the pipe became new again, freed from the imprisoning rust.

Then she clothed him in a basic enviro-suit with a light helmet. The Martian atmosphere, terraformed at one point, was thin, but breathable.

Once she was certain his body was intact, she recalled his spark, and with it, consciousness.

The Exo's eyes slowly lit up in a blue-purple color. His face was green, which contrasted oddly. He stared up at the ghost.

"Hello," she said softly. "I'm your ghost, and you're my Guardian now. Can you move?"

He shifted his arms and legs, then sat up, rubbing his head. "What happened?" he said in a deep, gruff voice.

"I don't know," the ghost said. "I found you this way. Your body was half-gone."

"Half-gone," he murmured, looking at his hands. "Ghosty, come closer. I need more light."

She obligingly flicked on her headlight setting, illuminating him in harsh white.

"Ugh, not that much," he muttered. But he held his arms up to the light, turning them this way and that. Then he gripped his own left arm, peering closely at it.

The ghost looked, too.

Scratched into the metal that formed the inside of his wrist was the word _Aestivalis._

"Aestivalis," the Exo repeated. "It's important. But ... I don't remember. Why don't I remember?" he demanded.

His ghost replied, "I had to rebuild large portions of your brain. Most Guardians don't remember anything of their pasts. Do you think ... maybe ... that's your name?"

The Exo sat there, shoulders hunched.

"Valis," he finally said. "I don't dare use the full word. I wish I could remember." He scrambled to his feet and gazed at the collapsed room around them. "Where are we?"

"Some kind of industrial complex, I assume," said his ghost. "On Mars."

"Mars!" Valis smacked himself in the forehead. "The Exo people. C-Clover-Cloven-"

"Clovis Bray?" said his ghost.

"Clovis Bray!" the Exo exclaimed. He ran straight at the nearest wall of collapsed debris and began digging at the sandy floor.

The ghost watched him uneasily. "If you get buried, I can't dig you out."

Valis ignored her in his feverish obsession. "It was five feet from me. It couldn't have gone far. Hey, robot girl, how long was I out?"

"Robot girl?" the ghost replied, indignation rising in her. "I'm your _ghost_."

"You sound like a robot girl," Valis said, still digging. "A cute one, you know? Anyway, how long have I been down here?"

"A very long time, judging by the amount of corrosion," the ghost said, suddenly unsure about this Guardian's stability. "Several centuries?"

"Centuries?" Valis exclaimed, sitting back on his heels to gape at her. "You're kidding, right? I thought you were some rescue drone they sent into disaster areas. How'd you reboot me after so much time?"

"I need to explain Guardians and ghosts," she said. "You've been through a resurrection, not a reboot. In fact, your reboot count stands at two."

Valis waved a hand. "Later, later." He kept digging, and his hands clunked against something glass. He pried it out of the sand and held it up.

It was a diamond-shaped pylon the size of his head. A series of lines and lights ran along its equator, long gone dark.

The ghost recognized it at once. "That's ... one of Rasputin's sleeper nodes. How did you know it was there?"

Valis set the pylon in his lap and stared at it. "Clovis Bray. Rasputin. Who's Rasputin? I should know this."

"The Warmind," the ghost said. "One of the great Golden Age AIs designed to protect Earth from extraterrestrial threats."

Valis ran his metal fingers over the node's surface. "I've lost so much," he murmured. "I used to know everything. I can't even remember why I needed this." He held it up. "Aestivalis."

To their surprise, the sleeper mode activated, green lights spreading across its surface. It floated into the air, opening and unfolding, playing an eerie music as it went.

A tiny black rectangle fell out of the node and landed in the sand. Valis snatched it up and examined it. "This. This was what I was looking for."

The ghost gazed uncertainly at the sleeper node, now awake and active. "I hope you haven't triggered something bad."

Valis stood up, gripping the black object. He watched the node spin slowly in place and play its music. "I'll bet I did." He glanced around the ruins. "How do we get out of here?"

"Follow me," said the ghost. "It's a bit of a walk, but we can find you some gear along the way."

Valis followed her up sagging staircases and down winding passages. He seemed to come out of whatever fugue state he'd awakened in. "This place is wrecked. What happened to it? Bombs?"

"Centuries' worth of decay," said his ghost. "You've been down here a long time. I've hunted through this place for you for eleven months, eight days."

"Wait," said Valis, halting. "Why?"

The ghost backtracked and studied him. "Because you're my Guardian."

"Yeah, you said that already. What does that mean? Am I some kind of military target?"

"No," laughed the ghost. "Let me tell you about the Traveler."

It was a long story, and they walked as she talked. Valis listened in growing disbelief. Alien invasions, Earth and its holdings depopulated, only one city left on the whole planet - in the whole solar system, even. And the Traveler, a paracausal entity that resembled a moon, sitting in the sky like a giant battery, pumping out space magic, otherwise called Light, to empower its resurrected army of Guardians.

"So, I was dead," he said flatly.

"Yes," said his ghost. "Dead for many years."

Valis looked at the black object in his hand. "I wonder if this is any use, then. Or if Aestivalis is important anymore."

"What is that thing, anyway?" his ghost asked.

He held it up. "Thumb drive. Memory storage. But there might not be any devices left that can read it."

The ghost flew up and traced it with a beam of blue light, scanning. "I can read it. It has a lot of data here, all about ..." She fell silent and turned off her beam.

"About what?" Valis said eagerly.

His ghost looked at him, flying right up to his face and scrutinizing his eyes. "What are you?" she whispered. "These are _your_ memories."

"Good," he said. "What are they? Since obviously I don't remember them."

The ghost spun her shell one way, then the other, agitated. "We should wait until we're back at the Tower."

"Why?" he said. "Fill me in now so I don't go making a fool of myself, talking about what I do remember."

The ghost flew in circles. "I ... you ... this is data stolen from Clovis Bray, data you were sent to destroy. But you thought it was important enough to copy, first. Clovis Bray is still around, Valis. Ana Bray is running it. Rasputin is still operating. This data could endanger everything. Including us."

Valis watched her fly. "All right. I won't ask for more details. All but one thing. Is Aestivalis tied to that?"

The ghost nodded emphatically.

"Then I won't spread the word around," Valis said. "I'll have to figure out how best to proceed."

They continued traveling, winding their way across the ruined complex toward the exposed area where the ghost had entered. The Exo moved lightly, acrobatically, swinging around poles and crawling under obstacles without a thought. The ghost watched him and pondered what fighting discipline he might take.

"So, you're a ghost," he said suddenly. "This little piece of magic sent to make a Guardian and keep them alive forever."

"Um, yes?" the ghost said. "You could put it that way."

"So you're not really a robot. Or even a girl."

Nonplussed, the ghost stared at him. "The Traveler created me with feminine characteristics."

"Right," said Valis. "But you're not a robot, either."

"I have mechanical parts powered by the spark in my core," said the ghost, wondering if she ought to be seriously offended. "Similar to the way you operate, as an Exo."

"Huh," Valis said. "So you _are_ a robot girl. For all intents and purposes." He poked her shell. "And you had to go look like this."

"What did you expect?" the ghost said acidly. "A cute human in a pink skirt?"

"Not saying I'd object," Valis replied. "What's your name?"

The ghost backed away from him in a huff. "I'd hoped my Guardian would name me, but I'm beginning to think that's a bad idea."

His purple eyes blinked off and on. "Wait. I think I'm expressing this really badly."

The ghost turned her back on him.

They stood there in silence for a moment.

Valis said, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

The ghost whirled to face him, her eye-light arranged in an angry downward V. "You're way past that, now. I'm regretting ever bonding our sparks, because now we're stuck with each other. I dreamed for so long about finding my Guardian, and so far, it's been terrible."

Valis studied the little robot and sighed. "We're both robots, and I still don't understand women."

"How about starting off by not being a creepy perv?" she snapped. "I'm your ghost. I'm part of your soul, now. Please don't make me regret it."

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I didn't mean it that way. I like your voice. I think it's adorable. I'm just having trouble parsing it with a tiny floating spotlight."

She hovered in silence, unsure how to take this.

"So," he ventured, "might I call you Sakura? It means cherry blossom."

The ghost turned the name around in her mind. It was a nice name with a pretty meaning. Not what she'd expected from Valis. Maybe she had misjudged him - they'd barely known each other a day.

"All right," she said, finally. "You may call me Sakura."

"Great," he said. "Let's get out of these ruins. I'm starting to feel claustrophobic."


	2. Chapter 2: A fine Titan

They'd been walking for hours through the labyrinth when Sakura halted and said, "Hostiles detected."

Over the course of their journey, she had directed Valis to a serviceable auto rifle and ammunition, along with a kit to clean it. Thus equipped, they were nearing the exit to the ruins when Sakura picked up enemies.

She phased from sight at once, but Valis still heard her in his head. "Twenty-five, spread out and moving this direction. Possibly scavengers."

"Or possibly they're after Aestivalis," Valis muttered. "That sleeper node probably called them." He raised his auto rifle, the weight comfortingly familiar in his arms. "Who're we dealing with? Humans or aliens?"

"Aliens," Sakura replied. "Looks like Cabal, by their formation."

This conveyed nothing to Valis. "What's the weak point? I'm in a soft suit, so I can't afford to take a hit."

"The heads," Sakura said. "They're humanoid, so the head is in the usual spot."

This reassured Valis a little, who was expecting sentient army ants or giant wasps. "Do they breathe oxygen?"

"No," Sakura replied. "Cabal don't breathe our atmosphere. They carry tanks."

This might be an interesting fight. Valis tightened his grip on his rifle. "You stay out of sight, Sakura, no matter what happens to me."

"Yes - of course."

He crept down a hallway with a dangerously sagging ceiling. At the far end, lights moved and grunting voices spoke to each other. Valis hurried toward them, keeping close to one wall. This hall was a bad place for a firefight, but they hadn't detected him, yet.

At the end of the hall was an opening in the ruin that perhaps had once been a basement. But the building had sheared sideways off its foundations, leaving an open space with a lot of twisted girders protruding downward like teeth. At the far end of this space was an opening into the Martian desert with the sun beginning to rise.

Filling this space were a swarm of aliens in bulky, armored suits. One of them made two of Valis. He crouched behind a fallen pipe section and watched them. Their heads were small and helmeted, each with a crest on the forehead that gave them a rhinoceros look. Each alien carried a tank of atmosphere on its back. And each one lugged a rifle the size of a Gatling gun. They must be immensely strong. But rupturing the helmet would vent their atmosphere, killing them as effectively as a bullet would.

Avoiding a fight altogether would be best. Valis hid and watched, hoping they'd move on and give him a clear route to the exit. But no, the aliens were searching with care, looking for something.

Looking for him.

An alien glanced over the top of his pipe and saw his glowing purple eyes. It roared. Valis shot it in the head. Stinking black gas erupted from the neck.

Bullets peppered his hiding place. Valis ran along the length of the pipe, bent double, reached the far end, and returned fire. He popped the helmets of two more, which enraged the rest. Several charged his hiding place, pulling out huge knives with blades that flashed red-hot.

"Oh, right!" Valis exclaimed, sprinting at them and sliding under their legs. "Totally sticking around for _that_ nonsense!"

As the aliens whirled about, searching for him, Valis shot their air tanks, leaving them gasping and dying. Then another alien punched him in the face.

The blow crushed Valis's metal jaw and nearly broke his neck. He flew across the room, collided with a girder, and crashed to the floor. He lay there, stunned, as the surviving aliens stomped toward him.

Suddenly, healing warmth cascaded through his wounds. "Don't worry," Sakura said from her spot in phase. "I'll have you up again in two seconds."

His jaw clicked back into its joint, flawlessly mended. The pain of the blow faded.

That was when Valis realized exactly how powerful he was as a Guardian with a ghost.

As the first alien reached him and drew back its red-hot knife, Valis leaped off the floor. He put all his upward momentum into an uppercut that smashed the front of the alien's helmet off. He glimpsed its frog-like face and tiny, angry eyes before its atmosphere exploded out of its suit. He swiped the knife out of its weakening hand and attacked the other aliens, alternately stabbing and punching.

Once, a knife slashed deep into his side, but Sakura immediately set to work healing it. Within a few seconds, the pain had vanished.

Valis crushed one foe against a sharp girder protruding from the ceiling, then stabbed the alien in the neck to finish it off. Then he spun in a circle, looking for more enemies.

Twenty-five motionless bodies lay around the room in various positions.

"I killed them all," he said in amazement. "I barely used my gun. Only my hands. And this knife." He fiddled with it until he found the switch to cool the blade.

"Judging by your fighting technique," Sakura said in his head, "you'll make a fine Hunter or a Titan."

Valis picked up his auto rifle. "Better explain what you mean. We've got a ways to go."

The lone Guardian emerged from the side of a sand dune and shaded his eyes from the sun's level rays. "Southeast," Sakura said. "In about a klick you'll find a road. Follow that."

"Copy that." He set off at a steady walk, his circuits still energized from the fight. "So, explain Hunters and Titans."

Sakura detailed both disciplines. Hunters were mobile in fights, spent their time in the wilderness, patrolling and mapping, and tended to be independent loners.

Titans, on the other hand, were heavily armored soldiers who defended the Last City and their people first of all. They had wicked hand to hand fighting skills, but were just as adept with other weapons.

"Titan for me," Valis said at once. "I want a beer at the end of the day. Roaming out in the backwoods, eh, not a lot of refreshments."

"You're fine with the armor requirements?" Sakura said.

Valis grinned, flexing the joints in his metal face. "Sakki, I feel naked right now without armor. I think I must have lived in it before I died."

He and his ghost fell silent, each thinking about that thumb drive, currently hidden deep in an inner pocket in his suit. Valis felt a prickle of terrified responsibility every time he remembered it. But ... why? The memory was gone. The longer he went without knowing what the stick contained, the less he wanted to know. This new world, with its aliens, Travelers and ghosts, didn't seem the place for him to drag up his final mission. Fighting an entirely new foe had been terrific fun. He couldn't wait to do it again.

Fighting while being constantly healed had increased the fun exponentially.

"So, you're my personal healer," he said, breaking the silence.

"Yes," Sakura replied, sounding pleased. "That's a ghost's primary job in combat scenarios."

"And all Guardians have ghosts."

"Yes."

"Man," he exclaimed, "why haven't Guardians taken over the world? Think about it. We get resurrected when we die, we heal any wound. I'm so strong, I killed those aliens with my bare hands. In a soft suit."

"At one time, they did," Sakura said. "The Risen called themselves the Warlords and set themselves up as petty tyrants. But some of the Risen thought their power should be put to more noble use than that, and they became the Iron Lords. They ended the reign of the Warlords. Over time, those following the ideals of the Iron Lords became the Guardians."

Valis walked in silence, digesting this. He came upon a hard-packed dirt road curving away through the Martian desert and followed it.

"You know, Sakura," he said, "I don't know if I should bring Aestivalis into this world. It has enough problems."

"That it does," Sakura agreed. "But by activating that sleeper node, you signaled ... something. Probably Rasputin. And if you were involved with him, he won't have forgotten you."

An AI called the Warmind might know more about him than he did. Valis looked over his shoulder at the empty road, expecting to see cars without drivers chasing him down. "How far to this Vanguard outpost, again?"

"Twelve kilometers," Sakura replied. "I'm not picking up any hostiles. You have a ways to go before we enter Hive territory."

"There it is," Valis replied with a nod. "I know there'd be giant insects running around. Are they spiders or ants?"

"Neither," Sakura replied. "They're humanoids powered by a giant worm inside."

Valis groaned. "That's even grosser than I was expecting."

He increased his speed to a jog, synthetic muscles working without tiring. At some point, he would tire - he vaguely remembered at time when he had pushed his mechanical body to its limits to discover what those limits were - but for now, he had the stamina of a well-trained human.

And the appetite of one. Despite his mechanical exterior, his body was designed to take in food and drink as a fuel source, as part of making the Exo body feel as human as possible to the human mind inhabiting it. Valis had now gone nearly nine hours without eating, and he'd been resurrected with an empty stomach.

"I hope they have a sandwich shop at this outpost," Valis said. "I need a big one. Toasted. Dripping mayo and mustard. With ham and beef sliced paper thin, mmm."

"You'll probably get a ration pack," Sakura said. "Not a lot of fresh food anywhere but Earth." After a moment, she said anxiously, "I forgot all about food. Do you have the strength to get there?"

"Sure," said Valis. "Don't have a lot of choice, do I? If I want to eat, I've got to make it."

He jogged on, saving his breath. Sakura kept her scans active, watching for hostiles. At this pace, they'd enter Hive territory in fifteen minutes.

"What's that?" Valis said, slowing.

A dead Hive thrall lay on the path ahead. It looked like a starved, naked human, but the face, turned toward them, had no eyes or nose. Teeth covered the entire lower half of the skull.

"Hive thrall," Sakura said, nervously watching their perimeter. "Lowest caste. They die easily, but they run in packs. Why is this one alone?"

Valis gave it a wide berth and jogged onward, checking his rifle's magazine. "We're going to have a fight, aren't we?"

"One o'clock," Sakura said.

Valis looked. Climbing the sand dune to his right was a huge alien in chitin armor. It carried a bone sword and shield. Its three green eyes fixed on him.

"Kill it?" Valis asked.

"Knight," Sakura replied. "Kill it."

Valis fired. The knight flinched behind its shield, the bullets only chipping the bone. It screeched.

A second later, a pack of thralls swarmed over the top of the dune, shrieking and snarling, their long teeth gnashing together. Valis poured bullets into them with one hand. With the other, he pulled out his stolen knife and flicked the button to charge the hot blade.

"Run," Sakura said suddenly. "Run!"

Valis almost argued. He could take down these aliens with a little strategy and elbow grease. But the little ghost hadn't steered him wrong yet, so he retreated, looking for high ground and a better vantage point.

He never saw the falling satellite.

It crashed to the ground where he had just been, destroying the thralls and the knight in one violent blow, blasting dust into the air.

Valis whirled and gaped. The warsat was a metal sphere the size of a truck, armed with radio antennae like spikes, and still smoking from its descent through the atmosphere. Crushed Hive body parts were scattered around it.

"What the hell?" he breathed.

"One of Rasputin's warsats," Sakura said, shaken. "It was aimed at you."

Valis cursed under his breath, scanning the cloudless sky. "I'd better keep moving."

He resumed following the road, moving a little faster this time, keeping an eye on the sky. "Thanks," he said. "For saving me from space debris."

"You're welcome," Sakura replied. "Rasputin knows you found that memory stick. I could have revived you after being hit by a warsat, but it would have shattered that stick."

"Maybe you should make a backup," Valis said. "Just in case."

"Once we reach the outpost," Sakura said. "I'll need time to read the entire stick. There's a lot there."

Valis jogged onward, jittery about attack from all sides. They ran across another pack of thralls, which Valis dispatched at range with his rifle, afraid to stand still for long.

The sun was high in the faint blue sky when they reached the Vanguard outpost. It was a bunker dug deep into a red cliff, with an antenna array outside that towered into the air. Two guards stepped out of hiding, leveling rifles on Valis. "Halt! Identify yourself."

Valis put his hands in the air, but pointed at himself with one finger. "Valis-2. Guardian. Just woke up a day ago. I have no idea what's going on, but I'm so hungry, I'm about to try grilled Hive."

The guards relaxed. One of them lowered his rifle and said, "Show your ghost."

Valis slowly lowered his hands. "Sakki?"

The ghost appeared beside him. "I'm here."

The guards produced their own ghosts, who scanned Valis and Sakura. Each of them wore a colorful customized shell.

"They check out," one of the ghosts announced. "Day-old Guardian."

"Great," the guard said. "Come inside. We'll get you on the next ship headed for Earth. We need every Guardian we can get."

Valis followed him into the bunker. "So, is showing off your ghost like a secret Guardian handshake?"

The guard grinned. "You might say that."

To Sakura, Valis thought, "I'm getting you the most awesome shell I can find. When you show up, I want people to say, damn, his ghost is fantastic."

"I ... " Sakura didn't know what to say. After being alone with her thoughts for so many years, this impulsive, forward Guardian kept startling her in new ways. But a new shell ... she couldn't deny how she envied ghosts with beautiful custom shells.

"That would be great," she told him.

Valis beamed, his face stretching in the Exo approximation of a grin.


	3. Chapter 3: Who are you?

A Guardian ship with enough space for a passenger departed Mars that evening. Valis rode in a compartment behind the cockpit. The other Guardian, a human Hunter, loaned Valis his datapad and loaded the Vanguard's orientation documents for new Guardians.

Valis alternately studied these and slept through the eight-hour flight. He also set the memory stick out where Sakura could scan it.

She scanned it for an hour before she was certain she'd collected everything. Then she flew in nervous circles around Valis, processing the data.

Her Guardian had been amazing as a human, and later as an Exo. The things she read filled her with a dreadful pride. Few ghosts ever found out anything about their Guardians' pasts. In fact, the Vanguard forbade it, because it could lead to all kinds of messy drama.

But Valis ... his name had once been something else ... he'd been deep into some very dark, secret business that sent nervousness creeping through her core. It had been centuries ago, but she feared that it was still relevant. Too relevant. She studied Valis's face in profile, his green, domed head, his intelligent eyes flicking over the datapad's screen, so quick to laugh and crack jokes.

 _Who are you?_

She must not ask. And he must not know until it was absolutely necessary. Rasputin had let them leave Mars, but if the Warmind knew a fraction of the data that Sakura now possessed, he would have blown them out of the sky.

Sakura found herself in the unenviable position of wanting to protect her Guardian from himself. _But that's not your job, is it?_ she argued with herself. _You job is to be his conduit to the Light. Heal him when necessary, raise him when he falls. He'll need these memories._

The whole Vanguard would need these memories. But not yet. Sakura shuddered. Not yet.

* * *

His ghost hadn't spoken to him since she read the memory stick. Valis didn't try to break the silence. He read the documents he was supposed to read and held his own misgivings at bay.

The Vanguard sounded like standard military in the way they operated - ranks, rewards, chain of command, tours of duty and so on. But Guardians also had a lot of flexibility in deciding where they went and what they did, often choosing their own teams and selecting missions.

This seemed awfully lax to Valis, but then, what did he know? This was a new world to him. He didn't remember much of his old world, except where he'd stashed that memory stick. And the name Aestivalis.

He leaned his head back in his seat and closed his eyes. Maybe Sakura would think he was sleeping and stop flying around like a balloon in a high wind. She knew more about him than he did, now, and her silence was unnerving.

After a while she stopped circling and disappeared, going into whatever dimension ghosts occupied while invisible. Valis relaxed. He searched his own fragmented memory for any clues about that final mission that had cost him his life.

There had been a flash of light. A boom like thunder in a small space, wild and deafening. Pain as he reeled away and fell. The ceiling and wall caving in. The glaring green eyes of another Exo, watching the light fade from Valis's eyes.

But he had no context, no meaning for any of these fragments. He'd been shot, obviously. But why? And by whom? Valis couldn't make it make sense. He needed those memories ... but Sakura had said that they contained data he had been sent to destroy.

Data only needed destroying when it was dangerous. Someone had killed him for it. And now, here he was, dragging this forbidden knowledge back into the world.

Rasputin had tried to drop a warsat on his head. Who knew what the Vanguard might do.

"Sakura," he thought.

"Yes, Valis?"

At least she replied promptly. She wasn't actively avoiding him.

"I'm in no hurry to know what was on that memory stick. Just saying."

Sakura was silent a long moment. Then she said, very quietly, "I'm glad."

This troubled Valis even more. Ghosts seemed like very moral little creatures - or robots, but a robot powered by magic couldn't be much of a robot. They had polarized views of right and wrong, which he found charming and refreshing without knowing why. For his ghost to be so upset about the secrets he had once kept ... it didn't bode well.

Valis studied, brooded, and dozed until they reached Earth and swept into the northern hemisphere. There he saw the Last City with a moon-like globe hovering over it.

"Is that the Traveler?" he asked Sakura.

She looked out the window alongside him. "Yes," she said fondly. "The source of our Light. I used to be part of it. Now I'm part of you."

This statement was so naively romantic that Valis's heart hurt. _No_ , he wanted to say. _Please don't talk that way. You don't know what I'm like._

Aloud, he said, "The Traveler's pretty busted up. What happened to it?"

Sakura gazed out the window. "It awakened. It smote our enemies, but it wounded itself in doing so. It's now operating actively against the Darkness. You and I met in interesting times, Valis. You've never known the era when the Traveler slept and left us in silence." Her voice dropped to a murmur, as if remembering her own weary travels.

Valis looked at the ghost, so close to his face, and saw the layers of encrusted dust that covered her shell. He wanted to brush it away, but how did someone touch a ghost? Sakura looked so delicate, floating there.

Valis cleared his throat. "Well. You'll have to help me out. Show me who to insult. That kind of thing."

Sakura laughed. "Well, not Zavala. He's Titan Vanguard and also Vanguard Commander. He'll be your boss if you take the Titan discipline. Very serious business. Jokes not recommended."

"Is there anybody who makes jokes in the Vanguard?" Valis asked.

Sakura shook herself back and forth. "The Hunter Vanguard, Cayde-6, was murdered a few months ago. I heard the other ghosts talking about it. It's been a lot less ... fun ... since then."

"Murdered?" Valis said. "What, somebody walked into his office and shot him?"

"They said he tried to stop a prison riot," Sakura said.

"Ah," Valis said. "I guess it didn't end well."

"No," Sakura said sadly.

Valis sat back in his seat and mused about another Exo being murdered, even a powerful one like the leader of the Hunters. A Guardian, dead.

"They must have killed his ghost," he muttered. "When I've fought, you keep me healed and alive. But without you ..." He gazed at Sakura with new understanding. "I'd better keep you safe, hadn't I?"

His ghost gazed at him, her eye examining his face in quick little movements. "You weren't already?"

Valis was ashamed to admit that he hadn't thought about his ghost's safety at all. He grinned. "Sure I was."

Sakura accepted this and resumed gazing out the window. "You'll be busy with training for the next few weeks. Guardians don't often take long to train."

Valis knew, somehow, that training wouldn't take long for him. His brain may not remember how to fight and kill, but his body did. "I'm a fast learner."

* * *

Several weeks passed in a blur. Valis received formal Titan training, was assigned basic armor and weapons, and practiced using his Light in combat.

As far as anyone knew, he was one more newly-risen Exo with a mind as blank as an empty sheet of paper. He laughed and joked with other new Titans, found the places in the Last City that served the best beer, and submitted to an Exo fitness physical, where experts in Braytech analyzed him for readiness.

Valis breezed through every test, showing the world a cheerful front. His fellow Titans liked him, he got along well with Zavala and his trainer, and hit it off with Lord Shaxx over unexpected Crucible wins.

Nobody but Sakura saw Valis's mask drop when he was alone in his tiny dorm room in the Tower. He would sit in a chair at his minuscule table - he never used the bed - and hold his head in his hands for an hour at a time. His new datapad lay beside him, untouched.

"What's wrong?" Sakura asked one day, after Valis had graduated training.

"Look at me, Sakki," he said, lifting his head and blinking his purple eye-lenses. "What do you see?"

She hesitated, slowly spinning her segments. "Well ... I see a very capable fighter. A powerful Titan. Popular."

Valis folded his hands on the table and stared at them. "That's what everybody's supposed to see. And it's all a lie."

Sakura stared, taken aback. "How is it a lie?"

"I'm not a Titan," he said, clenching his fists. "And I'm not friendly. I'm ... I was an undercover field operative. And I've done things, Sakura."

The thumb drive lay beside his datapad.

Sakura gave it an uneasy look. "You read the data?"

"Some. As much as I could stand." Valis placed a finger on it and twirled it in a circle. "I don't deserve to be a Guardian. You should have left me dead."

Sakura flew around him, upset both by his reasoning and by what she knew he had learned. "I can't unbond us, Valis. You're my Guardian. The Traveler chose me for you, so you can't be all bad." She flew in front of him and gazed into his face. "Can you?"

"Try me," Valis said dryly, returning her gaze. He put his head in his hands again. "My final mission was never completed. Aestivalis was stolen. But I didn't have a chance to record who did it. They killed me too fast."

"Do you have any memories?" Sakura ventured. "Any clues that might help? I didn't rebuild your entire brain. Only the ruined bits."

Valis sat in silence for a moment, digging through those fleeting seconds before his death. "Another Exo," he said at last. "I remember the eyes glowing as I died. But no other details. Believe me, Sakki, I've tried to remember more. But it's just not there."

"Hm." Sakura gazed at the thumb drive. "That other Exo might still be around. Your kind live for hundreds and hundreds of years, you know. Probably not a Guardian, but there's plenty of Exos in the City."

Valis straightened and folded his arms on the table. "There's a thought. But then, what happened to the Aestivalis project? It wasn't brought into use. I've read the Vanguard records. Nothing like it exists."

"Maybe your enemy hid it," Sakura suggested. "There was that other organization working against Clovis Bray at the time. Numin Tor. Maybe they were responsible."

"I was working against Clovis Bray, myself," Valis pointed out. "I was stealing their data. But this memory stick claims I was associated with one of the governments on Earth. Not that it matters, now - they're all dust and ashes." He groaned and ran a hand over his metal head. "Numin Tor. That name's familiar."

"They were a rival robotics corp," Sakura said, drawing on her own clandestine research. "When Clovis Bray got the contract to build the Warminds, Numin Tor set out to build their own. But they never succeeded to the extent that Clovis Bray did."

"Warminds again," Valis muttered. "Aestivalis wasn't a Warmind. All they had was the blueprint. Or ... that's all they were supposed to have had."

Sakura almost corrected him, but stopped herself. He hadn't read the whole thumb drive.

"You might check with the City weapons manufacturers," Sakura suggested. "If anything like this Aestivalis ever came to light, maybe you can sniff it out."

Valis straightened, his purple eyes brightening. "That's a good idea. Although it's not like anybody will share secrets with me."

"You're not asking for secrets," Sakura assured him. "You're only asking about new tech coming along in the next year or two. They always send out new catalogs in the fall. Gets all the Guardians excited."

Valis considered this. "But that won't get me closer to the Aestivalis."

"No," Sakura said, "but you can look at the specs and see if any part of it is being used in different weapons."

"I see your point." Valis steepled his fingers. "But I'm no engineer. I'd need help on this, and I don't know who to trust. Also, have you seen the list of weapon foundries? It's like the City's primary industry."

Sakura laughed. "War is our business, Guardian." She flew in a slow circle, thinking. "I may be able to get you into Omolon. Hakke and SUROS are the other big manufacturers, but Omolon actually gives tours. Everybody wants their weapons in the hands of Crucible winners and war heroes. Good advertising."

"Right." Valis touched the power button on his datapad. "Let's get registered with an Omolon tour group."


	4. Chapter 4: Omolon

Omolon had a huge underground facility in Core Southwest, across the city from the Tower. From the road, Omolon Foundries looked like a collection of warehouses and smokestacks with steam billowing into the sky.

Valis joined a group outside the main gate. He wore civilian clothes over his metal body, only his robotic face marking him as an Exo. To his relief, there were two other Exos in the group, as well as humans and several blue-skinned Awoken. Sakura remained phased, because her presence would out Valis as a Guardian.

"Not that it matters," she thought to him. "Guardians take these tours all the time."

"The less attention I draw, the better," Valis thought. "Keep an eye out, will you? You might notice something I won't."

"Right," Sakura replied.

Their tour guide arrived on a low cart that towed a trailer behind it filled with seats. He was an Awoken with dark blue skin. "Welcome to Omolon Foundries!" he exclaimed, waving the group forward. "The tour will be conducted via shuttle. The foundry can be dangerous, and we don't want anybody's limbs being melted off, do we?"

The group climbed aboard the shuttle, cheerful and chattering. Valis sat in the last row, beside a pretty Asian woman in a belted garment that was neither dress nor pants, but a combination of both.

"Hi!" she said. "Isn't this exciting? I've never been on the Omolon tour before!"

"Me neither," Valis said, leaning away from her a little. "You, uh, use their products?"

"All the time!" the woman said brightly.

Valis blinked at her, taking in her pretty face and colorful clothing. She used the weapons? Maybe she meant that she sold them or something. He could see her operating a shop somewhere in the City.

The shuttle set off between the warehouses, and the woman's attention shifted away from Valis. Relieved, he thought to Sakura, "I hate small talk."

The shuttle came to a ramp descending into a huge tunnel that sloped downward into darkness. The tour guide drove down the tunnel, talking all the while. First, they would see the metal reclamation area.

They drove by a hellish pit where metal was chewed and crushed by huge wheels, then fed into red-hot furnaces that separated the various metals by density. They watched molten metal splashing into ingot molds. Further on, they watched machines heat and hammer the ingots into tubes, wire, and smaller bits. They passed through a factory floor where white-clad workers used giant machines to craft delicate mechanical parts.

They passed through an assembly chamber, where recognizable firearms were assembled. Then they passed through a glassed-off tunnel where they saw technicians test-firing the weapons and making adjustments.

Valis watched each stage in fascination, but there was no sign of anything resembling the Aestivalis project. "I think it's a dead end, Sakura," he thought.

"They haven't showed us the theoretical weapons," she replied. "And they may not, because they're dangerous."

"This whole place is dangerous," Valis thought.

The tour guide brought them to a live fire range, where the group got to disembark and try out the latest machine guns and rifles coming up next season. The guide extolled the virtues of new stock shapes, better grips, new muzzle designs, and mods to stabilize kickback.

Valis admired every firearm he touched. But he was disconcerted to see the pretty woman doing the same. She handled each weapon with professional skill, grouping bullets in the center of each target.

"You're really good," he remarked as they climbed back onto the shuttle.

"I've had a lot of practice," the woman said, tucking a strand of black hair behind one ear. She smiled prettily. "I am a Guardian, after all."

Valis blinked. She was a Guardian? His brain choked, trying to parse her looks with the kind of violence he'd been training in.

"Warlock?" he ventured. She had to be a warlock. He could easily imagine her flying around in robes, flinging lightning everywhere.

She shook her head with a laugh. "Titan."

Titan. She ran around in heavy armor? He simply stared at her, dumbfounded.

She smiled at him. "Hard to believe when I'm dressed like this, isn't it? But I could snap your neck if I wanted to. Good thing I don't want to. Too much paperwork."

Valis tried to act as if she hadn't just blown every circuit in his brain. "I'm a Titan, too."

"Oh, really?" The woman sized him up. "You must be new, because I haven't seen you around. I'm Charon." She held out a hand.

Valis shook it. "Valis-2. Just graduated training."

"That's why I haven't seen you." Charon beamed. "I've only recently been reinstated, so I'm getting back into the swing of things. Can you believe these weapons coming out?"

Valis was afraid to ask what Charon meant by _reinstated_ , and kept the conversation about easy firearm topics. They talked weapon specs as the shuttle ascended another tunnel and emerged in the sunlight. The tour ended in front of the foundry's shop, where racks and racks of weapons were on sale.

Valis accompanied Charon inside, where they browsed firearms. Charon examined hand cannons. Valis drifted toward the pulse rifles.

"Sakura," he thought, "do you mind flying around in here and checking things?"

His ghost appeared over his palm. "Of course. This stuff is pretty average, though." She zipped over the pulse rifles, scanning them with a beam. Then she moved down the aisle to the scout rifles. Valis followed her, pretending to shop.

Charon was on the next aisle, examining a strange-looking quad-barreled weapon with a huge crystal in the center.

"Hello again," she greeted Valis. "Have you ever seen a trace rifle before?"

He stared at the crystal. Something about it raised a red flag in his mind. "Can't say that I have."

"Basically," Charon said, "it fires lasers. Very unique. I want one, but looks like I'll be saving up for a few months." She showed him the price tag, which had an extraordinary number of zeros.

Sakura scanned the rifle. Charon obligingly held it out, smiling at the ghost.

"Thank you," Sakura told her, a little shyly, then flew back to Valis and phased. "Bingo," she told him.

"Could I see the rifle a minute?" Valis asked. Charon handed it to him.

As the heavy rifle slid into his hands, Valis's mind lit up-with old memories, and things he had read on the thumb drive.

 _Aestivalis is a new kind of weapon. It uses theoretical tech never before harnessed by mankind ..._

Crystals. Glass-clear crystals growing in a vat, lasers making them glow ...

 _"It's not enough that they've built the Warminds, soldier. The Aestivalis is the finger of the gods, and if it's ever used against us, it'll be the apocalypse."_

The shape of a pyramid etched in stone.

Brutal impact as a beam of light struck him, shearing away half his metal body, a high, melodic note resonating through his brain ...

Valis slid the trace rifle back into the rack. His hands trembled. "I think I prefer a submachine gun," he said, trying to keep his voice level.

Charon was already checking out a rack of combat knives and didn't notice his discomfort.

Valis suddenly wanted out of that store. He ambled toward the door, pretending to stop and look at things, while his synthetic heart raced, driving his fluid pressure up and up.

"Calm down," Sakura whispered in his head. "Deep breaths."

He tried, but he didn't begin to calm until he was outside the gates, climbing on his sparrow. The rush of the engine comforted him as the hovering motorcycle carried him away from the foundry.

"What happened back there?" Sakura asked.

"That trace rifle used Aestivalis tech," Valis replied. "I remembered being killed by it. There were crystals."

It was a poor explanation, but Sakura didn't pry. She rode along in troubled silence for a while. As they stopped at a red light, she said, "Do you think Omolon has the Aestivalis?"

"They had a piece of it," Valis said. "It wouldn't surprise me if pieces were scattered across all the manufacturers. In which case, let them keep it that way. Nobody needs to rebuild it."

"But if only Omolon has it," Sakura said slowly, "that would be bad."

"Yes," Valis said through his synthetic teeth. "That would be bad."

* * *

Back at the Tower, Valis went to his room, loaded his tablet, and read everything he could find about Omolon. He wound up deep in the City network, reading conspiracy theories about the founders and their weird philosophies. None of it jogged his memory the way the trace rifle had.

"I don't even know if any of this is true," he remarked to Sakura, who was reading over his shoulder. "They say that Numin Tor fell apart, and the same people went out and started Omolon. Maybe that's where the tech came from?"

She tilted from side to side. "I could see that, especially if they had stolen Clovis Bray tech at some point."

Valis laid his tablet down and rubbed his metal face, a gesture left over from his old life as a human. "I'm stuck, Sakki. And I feel so ... off-balance. I think I need food."

"You skipped lunch," Sakura observed, "and dinner started in the cafeteria thirty minutes ago."

"That explains it." Valis stood up and gazed at his ghost for a moment. "You know ... I keep meaning to ask. How would I change your shell?"

"Oh!" Sakura spun her segments, surprised and pleased. "It detaches from my core. They have instructions at the Eververse booth and online."

"Right." Valis held out a hand, and Sakura moved to float above it. He inspected her closely. "You're so dusty. I want you to look good, but I don't know how to clean you off, even."

"Ghost maintenance can teach you," Sakura said. "I haven't been maintained since ... ever."

This made Valis feel worse than he already did. Not only had he not thought of his ghost's safety in battle, he hadn't attempted to care for her at all. He silently resolved to learn all this as soon as he ate.

"Let's go, then," he said, rising from his chair. Sakura took her place at his left shoulder.

The cafeteria was crowded with Guardians and their ghosts, talking, laughing. Valis found a spot at a table with a few Titans he knew from training. He told them about his tour and soon was deep in discussion about weapon specs. It kept him from his nagging worry about Aestivalis, or his guilt about his ghost's condition.

Afterward, he found the ghost maintenance booth on an upper balcony in the Tower. The technician there had an example ghost shell for Guardians to practice assembling and disassembling. It was pretty simple, Valis found.

"Always important to care for your ghost," said the tech. "Since you're new, and your ghost needs work, tell you what. I have an extra maintenance kit sitting here, taking up space." He passed Valis a small metal toolbox.

"Thanks," Valis said, taking it. He glanced at Sakura and saw that her eye-light was arranged in a smile emote. At least he was finally doing something right.

The sun was nearing the horizon as Valis headed back to his room. As he passed through the Tower courtyard, he found his way blocked by a crowd of people. He shouldered through them, trying to see what was happening.

He'd expected a fight. What he didn't expect was a female Titan in black and silver armor dancing in a ring of onlookers. Valis had seen Guardians dance before, and at first didn't understand the fascination. Then he started paying attention.

The Titan was dancing with her ghost. She rolled him along her arms and across her shoulders, tossed him over her head, where he vanished and reappeared, spiraling around and around her waist. She spun, too, executing a series of kicks that passed above the circling ghost. Then she stood still and let the ghost spiral up her torso and out in front of her. She clapped her hands. He vanished between her palms, only to reappear as soon as she opened her hands.

The dance continued, one choreographed move after another, each one requiring perfect harmony between dancers. Valis stared in awe. Sakura whispered beside him, "How do they do that?"

The dance ended with a grand flourish and pose from the Titan and her ghost. They both bowed as the audience clapped and whistled. Then the Titan walked off, pulling off her helmet and shaking out her sweaty hair.

It was Charon, from the Omolon tour.

"No way," Valis muttered. He followed Charon through the dispersing crowd. He caught up to her at the Tower railing, where she was standing to catch the breeze.

"Hey there," Valis said. "Where'd you learn to dance like that?"

Charon glanced up and recognized him. "Hello, Valis! Phantom and I have been practicing for months."

Her ghost flew forward and bobbed politely in midair. He wore a black shell with three yellow stripes, and didn't have a speck of dust on him. "Wasn't our dance great? I didn't even make any mistakes this time! You should have seen the time I misjudged her spin-kick. I went flying right into somebody's noodle plate."

Valis laughed, in spite of himself.

Charon blushed, grabbed Phantom and stuck him back in the air over her shoulder. "Of course, he would tell _that_ story."

"Where do you even start learning that?" Valis asked. "I mean ... that was amazing."

Charon shrugged. "It takes a lot of trust between ghost and Guardian. Lots of cooperation." She hesitated, looking at Sakura's dusty shell and the toolbox in Valis's hand. "You're still working on that, huh?"

He nodded, chagrined. Why had he wanted to talk to her? Seeing her ghost made him feel like an idiot. Deep down, he really wanted to talk to her about Omolon weapons, but he didn't know how.

Fortunately, Sakura was better at conversation than he was. She said, "We were just talking about our tour today. Do you prefer Omolon or SUROS weapons?"

Charon was happy to launch into such a topic, since the question of weapons was of consuming interest to all Guardians. Soon Charon and Valis were leaning on the railing, side by side, talking and watching the streetlights come on across the Last City down below.


	5. Chapter 5: I want you to run

Phantom spoke privately to Sakura on the Light-powered network shared by all ghosts. "Had your Guardian long?"

"Not even a month," Sakura replied. "You must have had your Guardian for ages."

"Not really," Phantom replied. "Almost a year. She lost her first ghost, but her spark was compatible with me, so here I am."

"Seriously?" Sakura exclaimed. "That's very rare."

"I know, right?" said Phantom, giving Charon a pleased look. "She's wonderful. How do you like your Guardian?"

"I'm still getting to know him," Sakura said humbly. "Having a Guardian isn't what I expected. He constantly surprises me. When I resurrected him, I thought he was a complete jerk."

Phantom laughed. "Is he still?"

"No, thank the Light. But ... he has secrets." She hesitated and studied her brother ghost. "We could use some help, actually. We're researching a Golden Age weapon. Valis is obsessed with it. But you have to keep it secret because it's so dangerous."

Phantom gave her a questioning look. "A secret? Don't worry, I can keep secrets. I had it beaten into me pretty well by the Ghost Gossip Network."

Sakura knew all about the GGN and the way news spread. "For the Traveler's sake, don't tell them any of this."

"Like I said," Phantom said bitterly, "I don't use the GGN anymore. Bunch of backstabbing rats."

Sakura accepted this. "When my Guardian awoke, he had the word Aestivalis scratched onto his arm. All we can learn is that it was a weapon."

She didn't mention the thumb drive or the things she already knew about the Aestivalis project. Phantom had to earn her trust, first, and he struck her as rather flighty.

Phantom didn't reply for a moment, but he studied Valis's arms, despite Valis wearing long sleeves. "I can tell Charon, right?"

"Of course, but make sure she keeps it secret."

"She will," Phantom replied. "She's very professional. Me, I'm not professional at all. But I know when to keep quiet."

"Good," Sakura said, and told him about Rasputin trying to drop a warsat on Valis.

Phantom's pupil shrank to a frightened pinprick. "I see why you want it kept secret. I've heard stories about Rasputin. He's basically a god."

"I stayed out of his way when I was on Mars," Sakura muttered. "But I'm afraid of what we might stir up if we keep investigating Aestivalis."

Phantom said nothing for a long moment. Then he said, so quietly that Sakura barely heard him, "I don't want to endanger my Guardian."

"I'm afraid Valis has already gone too far," Sakura whispered, remembering the sleeper node and its eerie music. "You don't have to tell your Guardian anything."

Phantom paced back and forth in the air. "I don't know. I'll have to think about this." He flew back to Charon and floated beside her. Sakura returned to Valis.

Charon was saying, "I don't know who pioneered trace rifle tech. Omolon claims to have invented it out of thin air. But the Vex have it, too. Guardians found a different kind of trace rifle on Mercury, where the Vex had destroyed everything."

"Vex?" Valis thought to Sakura.

"Time traveling robots," she whispered to his mind.

"Right," Valis said to Charon. "But what bothers me is the source of these weapons. They're new and unusual."

Charon shrugged. "New tech is being recovered from Golden Age ruins all the time. And who says we can't innovate, today? Look at all the alien tech we can reverse-engineer."

"Golden Age weapons, now," Valis said. "We know they had the power to erase entire civilizations and leave the soil afire for centuries. What if that tech was recovered and brought back into use?"

"You mean like nuclear weapons?" Charon asked, frowning. "We're so far beyond that now, even with engram technology and probability forges. Nuclear tech is so ... primitive."

Valis opened his mouth to explain about Aestivalis - then caught himself and looked away. "Never mind." When Charon looked questioning, Valis gave a laugh and a shrug. "My ghost resurrected me in one of those old Martian factory cities. I think my impressionable brain picked up bad ideas."

Charon nodded in comprehension. "I see. Golden age ruins and all. Well, I wouldn't worry about it. The only problem we have with our weapons is scraping up enough glimmer to afford them. Or praying they're assigned to us on a mission." Charon straightened with a sigh. "I need to head home. Gotta get this armor off and clean it. Say goodnight, Phantom."

"Goodnight, Phantom," said the ghost with a smile emote.

"Oh, you." Charon poked him with one finger. "Anyway, nice talking with you, Valis."

"Good night." Valis watched her go. Then he headed for his own apartment in silence.

Once they were inside and Valis had dropped into his chair, Sakura said, "I told her ghost about Aestivalis."

He looked up sharply, his purple eyes brightening. "What? Why?"

"I only told him the name," Sakura said. "And told him that it's secret. Phantom claimed he wouldn't talk. He didn't really want to tell Charon."

Valis dropped his head into one hand. After a while, he said, "Maybe it's for the best. I can't do this alone."

Charon flew down in front of him and gazed into his face. "You're not alone. I'm here."

Valis's face flexed in a smile. He reached up and touched her shell, very gently, with his metal fingertips. "That means a lot to me, Sakki." He sat up, retrieved the toolbox from under the table, and opened it. "Let's clean that shell of yours."

Sakura let him remove her shell, a little anxiously at first. But Valis was careful and handled her gently. Sakura had never been touched at all, and once she realized her Guardian wasn't going to hurt her, relaxed and enjoyed the attention.

"Looks like you had the whole Martian desert in here," Valis remarked, dumping sand into a pile on the table. He pulled out a cloth, added a few drops of cleaning solution, and scrubbed at the shell segment. "What made you go to Mars to look for me? That's a long way from the Traveler."

Sakura floated nearby, only a small round core with an eye in it. "Well, I ... I don't know. I did wander Earth for a few decades, but I had the sense that my Guardian was elsewhere. I stowed away on a ship headed for Mars. When I got there, I was sure you were there. When I found those ruins, I could feel you. But locating you was the trick."

Valis worked on her shell a little more intently. "Are all ghosts as loyal as you are?"

"Yes!" Sakura said fervently. "Our Guardians mean everything to us. I was made to help and support you. Just you."

Valis's hands stilled. He blinked rapidly and passed a hand over his eyes. "Sakura, before I died, I was a covert agent who enjoyed killing. I left a trail of bodies everywhere I went. People who I didn't have to kill. I deserved to die the way I did."

Sakura had read that file. She tilted herself to one side and studied him. "But ... that was before. Are you still that way?"

He laid aside a clean segment and picked up another. "Guardians are soldiers. Mercenaries, sometimes. I'm afraid that ... once I'm out in the field with just me and a gun ... those demons will return." He gave Sakura a long look. "The man I used to be would have killed you, too."

Sakura flinched. "But ... why?"

"You'd be in the way." He scrubbed her shell. "And you're so ... moral. Hard to murder people with a little voice in your head asking if it's the right thing to do."

Sakura soberly watched his busy hands. "If you were as wicked as you say, why did your spark have the Light?"

"I don't know." Valis heaved a sigh. "All I read was my old personnel file. Maybe I wasn't always a killer. I don't remember." He hesitated. "But I do remember the photovoltaic crystals. They bombarded them with lasers as they developed to alter their structure. Same as the crystal in that trace rifle."

Sakura floated a little higher, scrutinizing him. "That's quite a memory. Is it related to Aestivalis?"

"I think so. The memory feels important." Valis set each segment of her shell in a row. "All clean. Let's put them back on."

A few minutes later, Sakura was back in her shell, now clean and white, without a single gritty grain of sand to trouble her. She flew up and bumped her shell against Valis's forehead. "Thank you so much!"

He closed his eyes and smiled. "You're welcome, Sakki. And ... and listen." He cupped both hands around her. "If I ever ... cross those lines. Do things a Guardian should never do. I want you to run away, all right?"

"Leave you?" Sakura whispered. "Valis, no, I couldn't."

"I'm still the same man I was," Valis said, gazing earnestly into her eye. "I walked too many years in the ways of Darkness. If that takes hold again ... I don't want to kill you. Run away, instead. If someone kills me, leave me dead."

Distress rose in Sakura's heart, painful and suffocating. Abandon her Guardian? Leave him for the Darkness to consume? Her soul was bonded to his. She couldn't just leave.

"Valis, love," she whispered, "if you fall to the Darkness, it will quench my Light. I'll die. You won't have to kill me."

He shut his eyes and leaned his forehead against her shell. "I hope it never, ever comes to that."

Valis put away the tools and cleaned up the sand. Then he returned to his chair and leaned back in it, the way he slept at night. He folded his arms and his eyes blinked out. But after a moment, he whispered, "Sakura?"

"Yes?" she said softly from nearby.

"Do you think I'd have a chance with Charon?"

She held back a giggle. "I don't know. Why don't you ask her?"

He grunted and said nothing else. Sakura phased for the night, and listened to her Guardian's breathing until it lulled her to sleep.

* * *

The next day, a windstorm swept across the region. Guardians hurried about the Tower, cloaks pulled tightly around them. Ships had trouble landing. Ghosts were buffeted about.

Valis braved the wind to gaze over the Tower railing at the City down below. Clouds of dust were blowing across it, and traffic crept along the streets.

Something about the wind, the way it roared in his ears and pushed at his body, jogged a memory in Valis's mind. It had been windy on Mars, too. The terraforming hadn't eliminated all the dust storms. He had blinked dust out of his eyes as he accepted a package from his handler.

"This is the big one," his handler shouted across the wind. "We crack this, we crack Clovis Bray."

He had to wipe wind-driven tears from his eyes before he could read the writing on the package.

Caution: delicate. Handle with care. Perishable contents.

Valis reached up and wiped his eyes as he had that day in the dust storm. But Exo eyes didn't produce tears.

He stood there, staring at his hand.

 _That's from before I was an Exo._

How could that be? The process of transferring the human mind to the Exo frame destroyed memories. He'd only been rebooted twice, but still, he shouldn't remember the way the dust storm on Mars had felt.

What had been in the box?

Valis followed himself in the memory. He had taken the box indoors, to his private office ... and opened the box ... He closed his eyes, trying to catch the threads of memory as they unraveled in his mind.

The box had contained ... he tried to focus. He had peeled off the tape, pushed back the flaps, reached inside ...

His hand withered. He stared in horror as the flesh shriveled and blackened, the tendons curling his fingers together. He had screamed ...

Valis flexed his mechanical fingers, then gripped the railing with them. He didn't remember what was in the box, but it had been something awful. Maybe those crystals from his earlier memory? Was that why that trace rifle had worried him?

As he stood there, flexing his fingers against the railing and trying not to feel his flesh burning, Charon walked up. "Hey, Valis!"

She was out of her armor, and today wore tough pants, boots, and a heavy coat with a hood that looked ex-Hunter.

Valis forced a smile - not that it mattered, because Exo smiles didn't have much nuance. "Good morning, Charon. Windy enough for you?"

"A bit," she said, hanging onto the railing, too. "Look, my ghost told me about this Aestivalis thing you're interested in."

Hearing the words from someone else's lips startled and upset him. He pressed a finger to his mouth and glanced around to make sure no one had overheard them. There weren't many Guardians around at all.

"Sorry," Charon said, leaning closer, so he would hear her over the wind. "I can't find anything about it in the Vanguard records. But I went hunting through the Golden Age records that the Cryptarchs have put together. They said that-"

Something smacked the back of Valis's head. His hearing stopped working. His vision went dark. His body went limp and heavy. He pitched forward, over the railing, and fell through the void, down and down, forever. The wind roared and snatched at him.

Then everything stopped with a jolt.


	6. Chapter 6: Why are you a target?

"Valis," a voice whispered in his mind. "Valis, love, wake up. I think we're in danger."

He opened his eyes. They focused slowly as the purple guide lights ignited. He lay comfortably on bare dirt at the foot of the wall, gazing up ten stories at the Tower. His body felt relaxed and peaceful.

Then Sakura's fear touched him. She was phased, hiding.

"What happened?" he said, sitting up.

"Someone shot you in the back of the head," Sakura said, her voice trembling. "Charon, too."

Valis looked around and saw Charon a short distance away, struggling to her hands and knees. Her ghost circled her, sweeping her with healing beams. Charon's hair was sticky with blood, and spatters of it clung to her face. But the wound was gone, already healed.

Valis sprang to his feet, still feeling the warmth of Sakura's resurrection Light, and helped Charon up.

"They shot you, first," she said through her teeth, looking up the wall. "When I turned to look, they got me, too. Sniper. On the roof, I think."

"Someone killed us from inside the Tower?" Valis exclaimed.

"Someone who doesn't want us hunting down Aestivalis," Charon growled. "This pisses me off. You know, I thought you were nuts for going after weird Golden Age tech. It's only another gun, and it has to be mounted on a vehicle, anyway. But somebody killed us for it. Phantom, stay phased."

"Roger," he replied, disappearing.

Valis blinked. "Mounted on a vehicle?" But ... when he'd been killed with it, the enemy Exo had been carrying it ...

"Isn't that why you were interested in it?" Charon said. "Never mind. Point is, somebody else doesn't want us knowing about it." She drew a sidearm and set off along the base of the wall. "Come on. Maybe we can catch the sniper before they escape."

Valis followed her, a burning, volcanic rage growing inside him. "Sakura, transmat my auto rifle." It appeared in his hands in a shimmer of blue particles, summoned from the weapons rack in the Tower.

"Uh oh," Sakura muttered. "There was resistance."

Valis hurried toward the lift, trying not to stare at the blood still running down Charon's neck. "What do you mean, resistance?"

"Someone is in our room!" Sakura exclaimed. "I took your rifle away from them."

Valis cursed. The thumb drive was tucked in the back of a drawer, but it wasn't hidden very well. "Charon! My ghost detected someone in my room."

She spun around, eyes flashing. "We'll never make it in time. Transmat to your ship. That'll get us to the hanger, at least." She disappeared in a shimmer of light.

"Right," Valis said. "Sakura?"

Transmatting in and out of ships was the common way for Guardians to hit the ground running in battle, or to make a quick escape. However, it also worked as a jump to the hanger when a Guardian didn't feel like walking.

Valis felt his body whirled away through space, lights blurring around him. Sakura was one of the lights, pulling him from one spot to another with the power of the Traveler.

He landed beside his ship in the dim, echoing hanger. He immediately sprinted for the doors. Not far away, Charon did the same.

They pelted around corners and down several flights of stairs, heading for the dormitory level down in the wall. Other Guardians dove out of their way and gaped after them. Valis wished he'd put on his armor that morning, but he only wore it when actually on a mission. Charon wore only civilian clothes, too. They'd be at a disadvantage in a fight, even if the thief wasn't a Guardian.

As they reached Valis's floor, they saw his door swing open halfway down the hall. A hunter in battle gear slipped out with something gripped in his left hand. He saw them coming and drew a hand cannon.

Valis grabbed Charon's shoulder, thrust her behind him, and charged the thief, raising his rifle.

"I'm an Exo," he told himself. "Metal and wires. This will hurt me a lot less than it'll hurt her."

Valis fired and missed, his movement upsetting his aim. The hunter blasted him five times in a row with large caliber bullets at close range.

After the first bullet punched through his chest, Valis stopped telling himself that it didn't hurt, because it hurt like damn. But his momentum carried him all the way down the hall. As he started to fall, he put his failing strength into a shoulder charge.

The Hunter had underestimated Valis's tenacity. He turned to run too late. Valis smashed into him, his metal shoulder catching the Hunter square in the breastplate. They crashed to the floor. Valis tried to catch his enemy in a headlock, but his limbs were going limp as his delicate internal systems went dead one by one. The Hunter writhed out of his grip, leaped to his feet -

\- just as Charon ripped his helmet off with one hand and landed a right hook with the other.

The Hunter - another human - spun in a half-circle and hit the wall. Charon wrenched his arms behind him and forced him to the floor, her sidearm pressed to his skull.

"Theft and murder are serious business," she panted. "Who are you?"

"Just - a Guardian," the Hunter panted. "I swear, I was only supposed to swipe one thing from this room. Here!" He opened the fisted hand Charon had doubled behind him. The thumb drive slid to the floor.

It bounced into Valis's field of vision as he lay there, his mechanical heart struggling to keep his fluid pressure up. His circulatory system had been badly breached. Sakura poured healing Light into him from her hiding place in phase, but it was taking time to repair the damage. Slowly, Valis stretched out one hand and wrapped his fingers around the thumb drive.

"Who shot us?" Charon demanded. "Outside, on the wall?" She twisted his arms a little harder.

"Don't know his name," the Hunter groaned. "Some Exo. Never seen him before. Offered me glimmer - I needed it - look, I gave back your data stick. Let me go!"

"I'll let you go, all right," Charon snarled, dragging him to his feet. "Straight to Zavala."

Charon hauled the unfortunate Hunter away by herself. Valis got up and staggered after her, half-healed, leaking oil and fluids down his clothes. "Sakki, hurry up," he gasped.

"Stand still!" the ghost snapped. "I can't stick you back together if your insides are moving all over the place."

Valis obeyed, leaning against the wall with his eyes shut. Slowly the pain ebbed. His failing heart strengthened.

"And next time," Sakura whispered, "think twice before you take bullets for a girl, all right?"

"She's human," he thought. "Bullets would mess her up worse."

"You're human, too!" Sakura shouted in his head. "All these synthetic organs work just like a human body! Blast you, Valis -" Her voice broke. "You're so hurt. Right after a resurrection. And your brain - I'm sorry."

His brain? Oh, right, he'd been shot in the head. If his ghost had to rebuild his brain from atoms, then that meant he'd lost even more memories.

Trying to figure out if he'd forgotten anything, Valis hurried after Charon and the thief, holding his chest and coughing. It took him a while to climb the stairs, even after Sakura announced that he was healed.

"Why am I still so weak?" he thought.

"Fluid loss," Sakura replied. "I'm working on it, but I need you to drink a liter of water as soon as you can."

Valis glanced at his clothes, now soaked in the not-quite-blood of the Exo body. They were probably ruined. Too bad - he'd liked this shirt. Then he looked at the data stick in his hand.

Someone had gotten him out of the way long enough to try to steal the Aestivalis information. But hadn't it already been stolen by whoever had killed him centuries ago? Charon's searching online must have set off a trigger somewhere. Valis had been much more circumspect in his own research, Sakura helping him hide his identity online.

But the main problem was, someone knew about Aestivalis. And they wanted it bad enough to kill and steal. Of course, killing a Guardian only temporarily inconvenienced them, but if they killed their ghost, matters got a lot more serious.

"Stay hidden, Sakki," he thought, laboring up the stairs. He shared his observations with her.

"That had occurred to me, too," she agreed. "This enemy of ours knows more than we think. They didn't only shoot Charon. They shot you, first. They went to _your_ room to hunt the thumb drive. How did they know you had it?"

"Only Rasputin could possibly -" Valis stopped, a chill creeping through him.

Rasputin, the Warmind, was the only other entity who knew about that thumb drive. And he was fully capable of hiring assassins.

"Were you ever -" Sakura halted. Then she muttered, "No, no, you couldn't have been. Not with only two reboots."

Maybe it was the newly-generated synthetic neurons in his brain that dragged the memory to the surface. Perhaps it was two neurons meeting in a way they couldn't before. But, with a shock, Valis realized another lie he had been living.

"No," he thought grimly. "I've never been rebooted."

"But you have a reboot count! Right here, in your Exo metadata." Sakura sounded shocked.

Valis paused at the outer door, gazing across the Tower walk, where other Guardians had gathered around Charon and her prisoner, the wind whipping their clothes about.

"Sakki. Everything about me is a lie."

"What do you mean?" Sakura asked. "The data stick didn't say anything -"

"This wouldn't be on the data stick," Valis thought. "Because it was about me. Before Aestivalis."

There was a short silence. Valis watched as a Guardian hurried up with Commander Zavala striding behind him, an imposing Awoken in heavy plate armor. He glared down at the cowering Hunter.

"You mean," Sakura whispered, "you have a falsified reboot count?"

"Yep."

"But why?"

"I want to say it was how I hid. From Rasputin."

Charon pointed at Valis and beckoned him forward. Zavala blinked, recognizing one of his Titans.

"Are you going to tell them about the thumb drive?" Sakura whispered.

Valis's brain kicked into gear. If he showed Zavala the memory stick, Zavala would ask what was on it that had prompted a robbery. He'd take it for study, and the entire Aestivalis project would hit the Vanguard. Not to mention Valis's own shady past.

"You have a backup?" Valis thought.

"Yes," Sakura said.

"Erase everything on the thumb drive." He started toward Zavala.

Sakura hesitated. "All right. If you say so." She emerged from phase. He held out the thumb drive behind his back, where she swept it with a concentrated beam.

By the time Valis reached Zavala, the thumb drive was clean and empty.

Zavala asked the exact questions Valis had thought he would. Valis handed over the empty thumb drive. Nearby, Charon gazed at it curiously.

Tower security arrived to secure the hunter. As they marched him away, Zavala sighed. "This will be a tricky case, with no Hunter Vanguard." He beckoned to Valis and Charon. "Come with me. I want to hear more about this Vanguard sniper."

They followed Zavala to his indoor office, which felt warm and sheltered compared to the cold wind outside. One wall was covered in digital maps of the solar system with real time reporting on enemy movements. Zavala stood behind his desk - there were no chairs. "Now," he said, studying them with his glowing blue eyes. "Where was this sniper?"

"I didn't see him, sir," Valis said. "He shot me in the head and I fell off the wall."

Zavala's brows lowered in a forbidding frown, but his displeasure was not aimed at Valis or Charon.

"I saw the shooter for a second," Charon said. "Valis took the hit and I heard the shot. Scout rifle, I think. I turned to look, barely glimpsed someone on the hanger roof, when he got me, too. Next thing I know, our ghosts are resurrecting us on the ground at the base of the wall."

Zavala's frown didn't relax. "Why would someone target you two? Valis, you're a new Guardian. And Charon, you were only reinstated three months ago."

Valis and Charon exchanged glances. Charon's eyes questioned whether to tell what they knew.

Valis couldn't tell the truth, so he drew on a type of training he didn't remember he had: intelligence misdirection.

"When my ghost resurrected me, sir," Valis said, "I had that data stick. But it's so old, no devices could read it. I enlisted Charon, here, to help me find a reader for it. Apparently that set off warnings in the City network, because first we were shot, then someone tried to steal the data stick."

Zavala looked at the stick in his hand. "Nobody has tried to read this?"

"My ghost tried, sir," Valis said, the lies flowing off his tongue. "She couldn't access it."

Zavala produced his own ghost, who scanned the stick.

"I'm not detecting any data at all," the ghost said. "It may be using an unknown form of encryption."

"I'll take this to the Cryptarchs," Zavala said. "If someone wants this data bad enough to kill two of my Titans, it must be dangerous. Watch your backs, you two. I'll heighten security, but since nobody saw the sniper, we don't know who to look for. If either of you find any leads, report to me immediately."

"Yes sir," Valis and Charon said.

They left Zavala studying the thumb drive from end to end.

As soon as they were outside, Charon whispered, "You were resurrected with that data stick? And you never tried to decrypt it?"

Lying to Zavala was one thing. Lying to Charon was another - and besides, she already knew about Aestivalis.

"Actually," Valis said uncomfortably, "I did. That's where the Aestivalis thing came from."

Charon halted and stared at him, crossing her arms. "You lied to our Vanguard?"

"Yes," Valis snapped, glancing around to make sure they weren't being overheard. He drew Charon into the shadows under an overhang, out of the wind. "Look, if news of Aestivalis gets around, the whole Vanguard could be in danger."

"From who?" Charon asked, raising an eyebrow.

Valis drew a deep breath. "Rasputin."

Charon snorted. "The Warmind? His job is to protect humanity. Why would he care about some old weapon?"

"Because -" Valis hesitated and touched his forehead. "I don't remember."

"Naturally," Charon said, eyes narrowed. "Look, you dragged me into this. I've died once today, and I really hate that. Then you go and lie to our commander. You'd better get your head on straight, because I am so done."

"Your searching brought the sniper," Valis growled. "I've been way more careful. And like it or not, you're a target now. They must think you're my partner."

Charon snorted and turned in a circle. "Great. Perfect. So we sit here and wait for unknown enemies to pick us off." She lowered her voice. "Or we go find Aestivalis ourselves."

Valis stared at her, speechless. "But ... I don't even know what it is."

"It's a damn gun," Charon said. "Some cannon thing to mount on a vehicle. Uses a crazy crystal for a battery. Clovis Bray had their fingers all over it, so it's probably on Mars. Look, we don't have much time before this enemy of ours hits us again. Figure out where to go, and we can clear out ahead of the game."

This was so simple that Valis wondered why he hadn't thought of it. He grinned. "Deal."

Charon's expression softened a fraction. "And look out for your ghost." She turned her head a little. Valis had a chance to notice a dried smear of blood across her cheek. Then Phantom appeared in his black shell. He and Charon gazed into each other's eyes for a moment. Then Phantom snuggled under her chin, somehow conveying anxiety. Charon stroked him gently.

This display of affection caught Valis off guard. "Right, I will. Keep in touch." He hurried away, keeping under cover, the back of his neck growing hot.

He said nothing until he reached his room, which was in disarray from the thief's search. Grumbling, Valis closed drawers and returned his rifle to its rack, then remade the tossed bed.

The work served to keep a large number of alarming thoughts at bay. But eventually the room was clean, and Valis had to face them.

First, Charon had been shot because of him. Seeing her injured that way, wearing no armor, in a place that should have been safe - it brought back a savage, unreasoning rage. He wanted to kill the sniper with his bare hands, make him suffer for hurting Charon. Crush or not, Valis was responsible for that blood on her cheek. She wouldn't die again on his account. He'd make sure of it.

"Sakura," he said, "was Charon correct about what the Aestivalis is?"

The ghost appeared in front of him. "Charon was correct about the Mark One. But you've been concerned about the Mark Two."

Valis sat in his chair at the table with a deep sigh. "Now that the data stick is gone, you're the only one with the information. You'd better tell me everything."


	7. Chapter 7: Nothing I could do

Charon returned to her apartment and showered to wash away the dried blood. Phantom stood guard outside, uncharacteristically quiet.

Charon couldn't keep from panicking a little whenever she thought about the Aestivalis situation. All she had done was look up the word in the archives. Half an hour spent reading about a long-lost Golden Age weapon. Then - boom, shot. She remembered falling, helpless, not quite dead - until she hit the ground. The horror of it still echoed through her.

Phantom felt it, sensitive ghost that he was. He hadn't said much, except to cuddle now and then. But now she sensed him standing sentry near the door, and somehow it reassured her.

Charon stepped out of the shower, toweled off, and dressed in armor. She was taking no chances this time. She combed her black hair carefully, removing the last bits of gore.

"Charon," Phantom said, appearing over her shoulder and looking at her in the mirror. "Suppose we go to Mars and find this Aestivalis weapon. What then?"

"We bring it back to the Vanguard, I guess," Charon said. "I imagine everyone will be excited to have recovered new tech."

"So who shot you?" Phantom said.

Charon opened her mouth and closed it again. Somewhere in the Tower was a person who didn't want the Aestivalis recovered.

"Valis really dragged us into a mess," she muttered. "What do you think we should do?"

Phantom shook himself back and forth, blinking his blue eye. "Your idea is best - beat the bad guys to the weapon. But I ... I ..." He trailed off.

Charon reached up and stroked him. "Spit it out."

"You _died_ ," Phantom exclaimed. "You _died_ and there was nothing I could do." He flew around her in agitated circles. "That Exo just set you up and then blam. If it hadn't been so windy, I would have been out, and it would have been me being shot, and we'd both be dead right now. Never turn your back on an Exo! I can't - I can't -"

Charon held a hand in Phantom's path, and he bumped into it. She caught him and gazed into his eye. "His name is Valis. Don't be rude."

"I wasn't talking about Valis," Phantom said. "The Exo who shot you. On the roof."

Charon blinked. "You saw him?"

"Of course I did," Phantom said. "He wasn't a Guardian. No ghost ID tag. Big guy, all wrapped up against the wind, but I saw his eyes glowing green."

"Not an Awoken?"

Phantom's eye-light changed shape, emoting sarcasm. "I know the difference between an Exo's eyes and an Awoken's, thanks."

Charon released him and stared at herself in the mirror. "Why didn't you tell Zavala?"

"Because ..." Phantom scrunched his segments together and shut off his eye. He hung there in the air, looking small and terrified. "Because I was afraid of being shut in another cage."

Charon scooped him out of the air and hugged him, a lump forming in her throat. After she had lost her first ghost, Phantom had run across her and realized he was compatible with her spark. He clumsily tried to court her, resulting in six months of imprisonment by the overzealous Ghost Oversight Committee. He still hadn't recovered from the trauma of this.

"Nobody will ever put you in another cage," she whispered. "Not even Zavala."

Phantom blinked up at her. "I know. It's fine. I'm fine." But he didn't try to leave her hands.

"It's not fine," Charon murmured. "I'm here, and I'll never let you go like that again."

"I wasn't technically yours then," he said. "But I wanted to be. That's why it was so bad." He emoted a smile and flew back into the air, but he shook a little as he went. "So, an Exo shot you. But that's all we know."

"Well, we need to know more," Charon said. "Mister Exo will just have to keep stalking us, because I'm going to finish reading up on the Aestivalis weapon."

Phantom vanished. "If you need me," he said to her mind, "I'll be hiding in phase."

Charon smiled. "Good idea."

* * *

Valis awakened late that night to hear music in his head.

He sat up in his chair, blinking around at his darkened room. An orchestra played a sunny tune, but it came from everywhere and nowhere.

"Sakura?" he said. "Is that you?"

The ghost materialized beside him. "I hear it, too. But where is it coming from?"

Valis got up and investigated his room, trying to zero in on the sound. But it had no source.

"It's Mozart," Sakura said. "Ancient composer from before the Golden Age. It's coming in on a frequency nobody uses anymore."

"Can you track it?"

Sakura turned slowly in midair. Her blue pupil shrank to a dot. "Valis ... does Rasputin have a presence in the Tower?"

Valis's synthetic heart began to pound. "He'd better not. But ... the music ... the sleeper node played music when I opened it."

"Ancient music," Sakura whispered.

Valis hurried to his armor rack and began putting it on. "Rasputin is transmitting directly to us, isn't he?"

"Not directly," Sakura said. "I think it's coming from the sniper."

Valis cursed under his breath and strapped on his breastplate. "He can't take me over like he did the others."

Sakura watched him, worried. That was one thing they had puzzled out as she had told him what had been on the thumb drive. Unlike most Exos, Valis had never been under Rasputin's sway, and knew nothing of the Deep Stone Crypt. There may have been reasons for this beyond the stolen data.

But Rasputin was onto him. And Valis was tired of being pushed around.

He checked his armor's fastenings, then put on his helmet and lifted his rifle. "Let's take down a sniper."

Sakura phased inside his armor, ready to heal battle wounds. Valis opened the door and crept out into the dormitory hall. The music continued in his head.

"Upstairs," Sakura whispered. "At the top of the stairwell."

"Is Charon hearing this?" Valis thought.

"I'll contact Phantom," Sakura replied.

Valis crept up the stairs, rifle ready. It was three AM and the Tower was quiet. Rain pattered distantly outside. The only other sound was the orchestra playing with such deceptive cheer.

Valis reached a landing and peered upward. The door at the top was closed, but a shadow moved outside the tiny window.

"Visual," he thought.

Sakura tagged the unknown as an enemy. "Exo," she whispered. "No Guardian ID."

Valis crept up the stairs, watching the map in his helmet HUD. As he reached for the door latch, the enemy Exo turned and ran.

Valis burst out the door and charged after him. Rain poured down and stood in reflective puddles everywhere. Among the light and shadows, a figure sprinted down the Tower walk, making for the hanger. Valis followed, splashing through puddles that were deeper than they looked.

"Connected to Phantom," Sakura said. "Charon is calling."

"Let her through," Valis thought.

Charon's voice spoke over Valis's helmet radio. "Valis? Are you in trouble?"

"Chasing the sniper," Valis reported, clattering down the hanger stairs. "He's headed for the hanger, probably has a ship ready."

"Don't go alone!" Charon exclaimed. "Give me a minute to suit up!"

"No time," Valis said. "He's already inside."

Valis rounded a corner and saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He flinched sideways and narrowly missed a flashing knife. The green-eyed Exo had flanked him.

Raising his rifle, Valis whirled to face his enemy, just as the other Exo charged him. He knocked the rifle barrel aside and landed a crushing punch to Valis's mouth guard. Valis staggered backward and hit a rack of coiled hose. As he struggled to regain his balance, the music in his head grew louder, and still louder, now with a static-filled undertone that hurt his head.

The green-eyed Exo halted and watched him. Another Exo emerged from hiding and stood beside the first, also with green eyes.

"Sakura!" Valis thought, clutching his head. The orchestra was too loud, the violins a shriek, the drums and horns a deafening thunder. Beneath it ran that undertone of noise, transmitting data to his brain.

"I think I can -" Sakura's voice was barely audible over the clamor. Suddenly the music dropped to nothing. "Got it," she said. "I'm blocking the frequency, but - Valis - those Exos are transmitting it. I can't hold out very long -"

Valis lifted his rifle and fired at the two watchful Exos, who dove for cover behind a row of fuel tanks. Valis swore and ran sideways. He didn't dare ignite those tanks.

As he circled, one of his enemies leaped out of hiding, slashing at him with a knife. Valis blocked the blow with the back of his gauntlet and landed a punch that sent the other Exo reeling backward.

Suddenly the orchestra noise returned, so loud that Valis thought he'd taken another bullet in the head. Sakura made a tormented sound. Her Light flashed in Valis's head, then vanished.

Valis was drowning in noise, deafened, blinded, crippled. He found himself on the concrete floor, writhing back and forth, clawing at his helmet. "Sakura! Sakura!" he screamed, unable to hear his own voice. But her Light was gone, leaving him in the darkness without an anchor.

Two green-eyed Exos stared down at him, silent.

The music resolved into a modulated voice speaking in Russian. Each word slammed his brain like an armored fist. He reeled from each blow, only to meet the next. This foe inside his head was stronger than any alien, stronger than muscle, stronger than bullets, stronger than Light. It crushed him as it had crushed his ghost.

Merciful silence fell. A trickle of cold wetness ran down his face, inside the helmet. Then his consciousness slipped away into nothing.

* * *

Sakura awakened in a dark space without her Guardian.

She lay on the floor somewhere, and walls hemmed her in. She slowly floated off the ground and bumped into something metal she couldn't see.

"Valis," she called through their link.

Silence. Dreadful, blank silence. Her Guardian's Light was gone.

"Valis!" she shrieked, spinning in place. "Where am I? Valis! Guardian! Please!" She careened off the walls around her, blind, trying to find a way out. How could Valis's Light be gone? How could he be more than dead? Had the music killed him?

"Hey," a friendly voice said. "Sakura? Where are you?"

Phantom.

"I'm here!" Sakura cried. "I'm lost! Please save me! My Guardian is gone and I don't know what to do!"

Voices spoke in an undertone, and footsteps approached. Light flooded her prison. Sakura blinked up into Phantom's headlight and realized she was trapped under a set of arching pipes with metal barrels lined up around them. There were plenty of gaps she could have squeezed through, but she had panicked, forgetting her own headlight.

Ashamed, she flew out and found that she was still in the Tower's hanger. Charon was dressed in black and silver armor, gripping her own rifle, and Phantom floated beside her. But there was no sign of Valis or the enemy Exos.

"Where's Valis?" Charon demanded.

"I don't know," Sakura said. She flew back to the place where the fight had happened, playing her flashlight beam about. But all she found was a puddle of Exo blood where Valis had fallen.

"He's gone," Sakura said, staring at the blood. "Traveler's Light. My Guardian is gone."

Charon and Phantom hurried up and gazed at the puddle, too.

"What happened?" Charon asked.

Sakura described the musical assault, feeling very small and frightened, unsure whether to grieve or hope. "It was so powerful, it made me faint. Then ... they must have got Valis. But how did I end up across the hanger like that?"

"Maybe Valis hid you before they got him," Charon said. "Do you think he's dead?"

"I can't feel his spark," Sakura said faintly. "But ... but why would they steal his body, if he was dead?"

Charon circled the bloodstain, thinking. "This is all about the Aestivalis. Right? So, sure, they might kill him. But his information is too valuable. More likely, they incapacitated him somehow, which means getting rid of his ghost. You're lucky to be alive."

This made a horrible amount of sense. "But where would they take him?" Sakura wailed. "We don't even know if the Aestivalis still exists!"

Phantom replied, "A ship took off just as we arrived. Air traffic control says it was headed to Mars."

"Well then." Charon slung her rifle over her shoulder on its strap. "Come on, you two. Looks like we're going on a little trip."


	8. Chapter 8: Protocol Mulligan complete

Jin awakened on a Mars he didn't remember.

He lay on cracked, dusty pavement, the pinkish Martian sky spread above him. Two robots stood over him, each wearing armor and covering him with their rifles.

Jin grinned and raised both hands, even though he was lying flat on his back. "Hey, guys. Must have been some party last night, huh? Let me guess. I owe you money."

One of the robots jerked his gun upward, gesturing for Jin to rise.

"Silent type, eh?" Jin cautiously sat up. As he did, he caught sight of his hands. Robot hands. He touched his face. The angles and contours of a robot face met his fingertips.

"This is a joke, right?" he said, slowly climbing to his feet. "Knock me out, put some kind of gloves and mask on me, trick me into thinking I'm a robot, too?"

"What's your name?" one of the robots growled. Both of them had different faces, but identical green eyes.

"Jin," he replied, raising an eyebrow. "Smith."

"Protocol Mulligan complete," said the other robot.

"I just said my name's Jin," he said. He glanced around. Crap, he was standing in the courtyard outside the main Clovis Bray offices. But what had happened to them? They were half-buried in snow and drifted soil, and many of the enormous plate glass windows were broken. It looked like a very long time had passed - but how was that possible? He'd only just received intelligence on how to break the Aestivalis project.

He was unarmed, but he wore strange plate armor that weighed comfortingly on his limbs. Was he a robot underneath? There was no way to tell at the moment, but he felt normal enough. The armor might protect him if he made a break for it. But these robots looked pretty tough. They'd either shoot him or run him down on foot.

"Come with us," one of the robots said. The other stepped behind him and prodded him with the rifle.

"Okay, okay, I'm going," Jin said.

The robots marched him off between the Clovis Bray buildings. Thankfully, they were moving away from the Rasputin core, which was a diamond-shaped skyscraper of black metal. Jin wanted nothing to do with the Warmind, especially if he was a robot now. Talk about being vulnerable.

A thought itched at the back of his mind - something he'd forgotten. He studied the knife in a sheath hanging from the hip of the robot ahead of him, trying to pin down the memory.

There had been a girl. That was it. A girl with a cute voice ... damn, did he have feelings for her? He couldn't afford that in this line of work. But the memory wouldn't go away. He was alone, and there was no sign of any girl. That was bad.

As they marched him by an intact building, a woman burst out the doors and ran toward them. Jin watched her expectantly. Was this the girl? Then she spoke, and her voice was wrong.

"What are you three doing? What's going on?"

The green-eyed robots halted and raised their weapons. The woman halted.

"Sorry about this, ma'am," Jin said. "They've taken me prisoner and I have no idea why."

The woman studied their group, frowning. "Three Exos. Are you a Guardian?"

The word rang a faint bell in Jin's head, but he couldn't quite pin it down. "No ma'am, not legally. I'm Jin."

The woman blinked at him in confusion. Then she glared at his captors. "You two, release him. By order of Ana Bray."

Jin knew exactly who she was, now. Daughter of Clovis Bray, heir to the company, sharp as a razor, and one of the people Numin Tor hated most. Destroying the Aestivalis project would ruin their stock and send the investors running.

If there were any investors. Jin glanced at the partly-ruined buildings. Clovis Bray had never looked this bad, and where were all the employees? The place was a graveyard.

One of the green-eyed Exos said, "Protocol Deep Sky is running. Do not interfere."

Ana gasped and retreated a step, staring from face to robotic face. "Rasputin! What have you done?"

"Do not interfere," the other robot said.

"Is Rasputin controlling them?" Jin said. "That explains a lot."

The robots marched him onward, but Ana ran alongside. "Rasputin, Exos are people! You can't do this to people!"

Neither robot replied.

"You know," Jin said, "I think I've been kidnapped. Any idea what Rasputin wants?"

"Protocol Deep Sky," Ana said. "I don't know that one. Just - just go along with it. I'll see what I can do." She halted and pulled out a tablet, which she tapped furiously.

So, the robots were people under mind control. He probably shouldn't kill them, then. Not that he knew how to kill a robot, exactly. If you broke a robot's neck, would they even notice?

The thought of the girl with the cute voice nagged at him. He needed to escape these guards and find her. Something told him that she was in danger, and he didn't want her hurt. But who was she, and where? He couldn't remember meeting a girl, much less falling for one. He was Jin, covert operative, with a mission to sneak into Clovis Bray and destroy the Aestivalis project.

And, somehow, he was a robot now.

That worried him, too. As the Exos marched him into one of the huge, echoing buildings, Jin tried to parse the robot thing. The last he remembered, he'd been human. The guys at Numin Tor had paid him a lot of money to take a side job for them. All they wanted was a copy of the Aestivalis data before he destroyed it. Not a big deal, right? A cool five mil was riding on it.

When had he become a robot?

The Exos led him down a spiral staircase and down winding concrete halls, deeper and deeper underground. Jin walked with them, increasingly disconcerted. There was a gap in his memory, and he couldn't find it. It was like he had lived another life alongside this one.

At last they reached a huge steel door, like a bank vault. One of the Exos stepped up to a keypad beside it and typed in a code. The other Exo simply placed both hands on the steel door. The door clicked and slowly swung open.

Beyond it waited the Aestivalis.

* * *

Charon landed her ship atop a rocky hill overlooking the Clovis Bray facility. As she transmatted outside, there was a distant boom and dust exploded into the sky.

Charon watched the dust cloud drift across the buildings. Both ghosts did, too.

"Do you think that was your Guardian?" Phantom asked.

Sakura watched the dust settle. She reached for Valis's spark, desperate, searching. But it wasn't there. Nothing but silence and the beginnings of depressing loneliness.

"I don't know," she said. "He may be unconscious or ..."

Even unconscious, she would be able to feel the life and warmth of his spark. But she felt nothing.

Charon bounded down the hillside. Phantom and Sakura phased and followed. As they neared the outermost warehouses of the Clovis Bray complex, the ground began to vibrate with barely-audible thunder.

"Guys," Phantom said, "I'm registering a pulse of seismic activity on the far end of the facility. But it doesn't look geologic. More like machinery."

"Could they have found the Aestivalis already?" Charon muttered, ducking between warehouses and peering around for enemies. The complex was deserted, but the black diamond of Rasputin's core loomed into the sky nearby, a vast threat all by itself.

"What do you know about the Aestivalis?" Sakura asked.

"It's a gun," Charon replied. "Like a giant trace rifle. But it's so huge that they have to stick it on a tank to move it around. I can't believe Valis just handed all that data to Zavala. I'd sure love to know what we're dealing with."

"He didn't," Sakura said. "I erased the thumb drive."

Charon froze, mouth falling open. "You ... erased it. So all that information ..."

"I have it all," Sakura said.

Charon held out a hand and snapped her fingers. Sakura appeared over her palm, her blue eye emoting sadness.

"Tell me," Charon said. "Is Rasputin about to vaporize us with a death ray?"

"No," Sakura replied. "He wants to vaporize the black pyramid."

"What black pyramid?"

"The one out in the desert. Only Rasputin knows about it. Valis stole the data and hid it because it was too dangerous. Rasputin has been too weak to do anything about it, but he recently regained power and memory. When Valis activated the sleeper node after I resurrected him, it forced Rasputin to remember the Aestivalis and the black pyramid. Rasputin sent agents to retrieve the memory stick, because he wasn't sure who Valis was. But he must have learned enough."

Charon stared at the ghost. "How do you know all this?"

"Valis and I figured it out last night," Sakura said, drooping a little. "It was ... it was our last conversation."

Charon felt a pang of sympathy from Phantom.

"But," Charon protested, "why did they want Valis?"

"I don't know," Sakura said. "Revenge, maybe -"

A distant boom interrupted them. A beam of purple light a foot wide flashed between the buildings and burned straight through a wall.

Charon leaped for cover. She crouched behind a concrete pillar, peering out. No more lasers or loud noises. Dust drifted on the air.

Footsteps crunched on the road. Charon gripped her rifle and checked her helmet HUD. A single person was moving up the road toward them. Phantom had flagged it in yellow-a potential enemy.

"It's Valis," Sakura whispered. "I feel his spark ... but what's happened to it?" She phased into being and floated beside Charon, troubled. The lovely companion warmth of her Guardian had been replaced by something cold and unfamiliar. His spark was the same shape, but it had shifted entirely to Void Light.

"Hide," Charon whispered as the footsteps drew closer.

"No - he's my Guardian," Sakura said. "I'm not afraid." But she didn't fly out to meet him, either.

Valis rounded the corner. He wore strange armor, an unpainted matte black. Huge ice-white crystals sprouted from the shoulders and back. He carried a strange-looking gun, long and narrow, like the business end of a flamethrower. Cables snaked out of the barrel, looped around Valis's body, and plugged into the armor. His eyes burned purple, flickers of void Light surrounding them.

"Valis?" Charon called.

The Exo whipped the rifle to his shoulder and fired the monstrous beam. It cut through the concrete pillar with a stench of rapidly-melting rock and burned deep into Charon's left arm. She screamed and threw herself behind the next building. Valis tracked her with the laser, silent, controlled. He caught her hip before she escaped his line of sight.

Charon sank to the ground, cursing. Phantom healed her from phase, murmuring private words of comfort to her mind.

Sakura added her own Light to Phantom's healing, horribly guilty. Why had Valis attacked his own friend? What had happened to him?

Valis was circling the building at a walk, hunting Charon. Sakura hid herself in phase and flew to him, ashamed that she was afraid of her own Guardian.

"Valis!" she said to his mind. "What are you doing? She's your friend!"

The Exo halted, looking around for her. "Who said that?"

"It's me, Sakura. Your ghost."

Valis grinned, more void Light gleaming from his mouth. "Come out where I can see you. I promise to make this fast." He raised the weapon.

"No thanks," Sakura replied with a shudder. "What did they do to you?"

"Equipped me with the Aestivalis Mark Two," Valis replied. "And my name is Jin."

Sakura floated beside him in silent dismay.

Valis moved on, returning to the hunt. Sakura flew after him, trying to keep them distracted. "Leave her alone! She's your friend!"

"I don't have any friends," Valis replied. "But you know what? You're right. This is boring." He lowered the rifle and walked off. "I have bigger things to hunt."

Sakura followed him, afraid of what he might be after. His Light was so cold, and his memory was gone. This was the part of himself that he'd been so afraid of, that he'd warned her about.

 _"If I ever ... cross those lines. Do things a Guardian should never do. I want you to run away, all right?"_

Had he reverted on his own, or had it been done to him? She thought about the orchestra music of the night before. That must have been what did it. In which case, Rasputin was to blame.

Valis navigated the maze of streets with ease and wound up in front of the main Clovis Bray building, where a couple of sparrows were parked. As he climbed onto one, Ana Bray stepped outside and stood staring at him.

"You - that's the Aestivalis suit. Where did you get that?"

"It was a gift," Valis laughed. "From Rasputin. Don't worry about those two other Exos. They didn't suffer." He patted the rifle.

Sakura felt sick.

Ana Bray clenched her fists. "That weapon is classified! Where do you think you're taking it? And that's my sparrow!"

Valis raised the rifle and aimed it at her.

Ana blanched and stood very still.

"Rasputin's sending me to kill things," Valis said evenly. "This gun makes it easy. Are you going to try to stop me?"

"No," Ana said faintly. "You just ... just go on and follow your orders."

Valis lowered the rifle. "Good. Killing unarmed women is no challenge." He activated the sparrow, whirled it around, and roared out of the Clovis Bray complex, heading for the open desert.

Sakura followed, desperation rising within her. Surely the Valis she had bonded to was still in there. He couldn't have been completely erased. This stranger wasn't all there was, even if he had forgotten.

"Jin," she said to his mind, "Rasputin has wiped your memory. You're not a killer anymore. You're a Guardian."

"Whatever that means," Valis said over the sparrow's engine. "You know, you have a nice voice. I keep trying to place it. But I don't know what you look like."

"You'll shoot me," Sakura said, eyeing the rifle slung over his shoulder.

Valis shrugged. "I don't like killing unarmed women. If you attack me, sure, I'll take you out."

"I'll come out when we stop," Sakura said, although she trembled. "Don't you remember us? You told me you might slip back into this old life. You told me to run away and leave you if that happened."

"Huh," Valis said. "That's sound advice, even if I don't remember giving it." He accelerated, following a long hillside down into a fold in the land. "So, why didn't you run away?"

"Because I want you back," Sakura replied. "My spark is bonded to yours, Guardian. I can't ... can't abandon you."

Valis said nothing for two miles. Then he muttered, "I should remember. But nothing makes sense. You know, I was sent to destroy the Aestivalis. Maybe I did destroy the mark one. But this mark two suit ... it's hooked directly into me. They stuck me full of probes. If I wasn't an Exo, I'd be in agony right now."

"It's using your Light?" Sakura exclaimed, aghast. "But ... that's impossible!"

"You saw it," Valis said. "It's a Void Light laser. I couldn't figure out where the energy was coming from. But I think it must be this Guardian nonsense. And how I'm talking to a disembodied girl. So, explain to me how this works."

Sakura told him about the Traveler and Guardians all over again. Valis listened in silence, guiding the sparrow deeper and deeper into the Martian desert.


	9. Chapter 9: Wraiths

When Sakura finished, Valis said, "What a crazy story. I'd refuse to believe it, except I'm flying across Mars and I can see the tree stumps from the old terraforming." He swerved to avoid one. "I'll assume you're telling the truth as you know it. If you're lying, at least I can enjoy listening to your voice. So. I'm one of the good guys now, because of you."

"Hopefully," Sakura replied.

He nodded. "Glad I've only killed people who attacked me so far. Self-defense."

"Except Charon," Sakura said.

"I let her live," Valis replied. "I can play the good guy. Right now, the Russian dude is telling me to crack open some pyramid and kill everything inside. You know anything about that?"

"Yes," she said, "it was on that data chip you stole. It's of unknown extraterrestrial origin, and Rasputin wants it gone."

"Sounds about right." Valis nodded. "He's also saying to leave you behind, because you'll die."

"I'll die?" Sakura said blankly.

"Yeah, there's some kind of Light suppression field. I didn't know what he meant until you explained it. Somehow, I think the Aestivalis won't care."

"Light suppression," Sakura whispered. "No wonder they built a weapon that siphons your Light that way. It would be the only way you could use it." She didn't voice the thought of what might happen to her inside a suppression field. She was made of Light.

"I don't suppose the advice of a super intelligent Warmind will stop you," Jin said. "Don't die, okay?"

By this time, they were far out in the desert. In the distance, on the edge of sight, stood a single pointed mountain that might have been a pyramid. Jin headed straight toward it.

"This is the Cydonia region," Sakura said with a shiver. "Even back before the Golden Age, there were rumors of a pyramid here."

"I guess there's a reason they never colonized out this direction," Jin remarked. "All I remember is that Cydonia was a wasteland with nothing interesting in it. At least, that's what they told us."

The pyramid on the horizon inched nearer. Sakura watched it with dread. It grew darker and clearer, its sides made of dusty black obsidian - or some black material, anyway.

"Where did it come from?" she whispered.

"I don't know," Jin replied. "Rasputin's not talking. Looks old, though."

"Older than this planet," Sakura muttered. "Valis - Jin - how do you hope to kill whatever is inside? They must be immortal."

"The Aestivalis will do the trick," Jin said. "Besides, Rasputin will kill me if I don't. Do you realize, my Exo body was specially manufactured for weapon compatibility? It's a real joke that they stuck me in it. Rasputin threatened to wipe my consciousness and take charge of my body himself. That's what he'd done to those other two Exos. They were just shells."

"That's horrible," Sakura said. Her fear of Rasputin tripled. He had already rolled Jin's memory back to before he became an Exo. What might he do to her, if she crossed him?

The trouble was, she was crossing him right now. She was hoping to steal her Guardian back.

They neared the pyramid, the shape of it razor-edged against the pale sky. Jin slowed the sparrow to a crawl, head turning as he looked for enemies.

Sakura said timidly, "I can help you scan. I'm connected to your HUD."

She felt him cycle through his internal settings.

"What do you know. I found your map. I guess old Raz didn't remove everything. So, no targets. But you flagged the pyramid as one big enemy."

"It's full of hostiles," she said. "I'm detecting energy on similar frequencies as Taken. But it's ... different. Less orderly. I keep thinking of them as chaos beings."

Jin parked the sparrow a hundred yards from the pyramid's base. It towered over them, the black edifice gleaming in the sun. It was etched in geometric patterns. _Writing_ , Sakura thought. _Writing in a tongue more ancient than the sun, itself._ She trembled, suddenly feeling vulnerable even in phase. She covertly slipped inside the physical space that Valis occupied, hiding inside his armor.

"Any doors?" Jin asked.

"Underground," Sakura replied. "This is only the top half of this thing."

Jin whistled. "Well, then. Let's see if we can add a window."

He walked up to the black pyramid, raised the huge, heavy Aestivalis rifle, and fired at the wall. The purple beam struck the black stone and erupted in red sparks. Smoke writhed into the sky. Jin slowly swept the beam up and across, carving a doorway. The laser cut a deep slash in the black material. Sakura detected poisonous compounds in the smoke. "Don't breathe in."

"My helmet is filtering it." Jin kept cutting.

After ten minutes of intense heat, a chunk of wall the size and shape of a door fell outward onto the sand. Inside was black honeycomb structure, also cut through. Beyond that was the pyramid's interior, blacker than the void, itself. Cold billowed over them, as if Jin had opened a freezer.

He held out a hand, the way a Guardian summoned their ghost. Sakura automatically flew there and appeared above it.

Jin jumped and gazed at her. "There you are. When you said you were a little robot, you weren't kidding." He gestured to the door with his gun barrel. "Do you think going in there will kill you?"

"Maybe," she admitted. "But what if it kills you?"

He gave a single mirthless laugh. "I'm an Exo. It takes a lot to kill me. Besides, my mission is to kill every last being in that pyramid. Are you coming with me? It might be handy to have someone mapping the place."

Sakura hesitated, fear shivering through her. Her Guardian's cold Light would provide no protection against the chill of outer Darkness. At the same time, somewhere deep inside, she was beginning to be angry. Furiously, smolderingly angry that Rasputin had taken her Guardian from her. If she let Valis enter that pyramid alone, he'd probably never come out. If she accompanied him, and he died, they'd die together. But their chances of survival were stronger together.

"I'm coming with you, Valis," she said.

He grinned, his mouth lighting up. "Good girl."

* * *

"I'm tracking them out in the Cydonia region," Phantom said from his phased spot inside Charon's armor. "They made crazy good time. We've got about twenty-five miles to go."

Charon rode her own sparrow, flying along the faint trail left by Valis's stolen vehicle. The silver trim on her black armor flashed in the sun.

"Why are we chasing them?" Phantom asked. "He tried to kill you."

"I've got to know what Rasputin's doing to him," Charon replied. "He was my friend, Phantom. Guardians don't abandon Guardians. If his ghost can get through to him, he might come back to himself."

"And if he kills her?" Phantom said grimly.

Charon didn't answer for a long moment. "Then I'll do my duty."

A Guardian who killed their own ghost must be killed, themselves. It was an unwritten law, and not just of the Vanguard.

As they flew, the old tree stumps gave way to a rocky plain. Rising out of that plain was a single black pyramid.

"What is that thing?" Charon muttered.

Phantom scanned it. "It's a non-terrestrial material. I'm detecting unknown mineral composition, along with iron. Some kind of alloy."

"What's a pyramid doing in the middle of a Martian desert?"

"It's a ship, duh," Phantom said. "A crashed one. It's half-buried."

"A pyramid space ship?" Charon said skeptically.

"Yep," Phantom replied. "And we'd better hope that Valis's laser works on whatever lives inside, because I'm picking up energy readings like you wouldn't believe. The thing is a city."

"What kind of energy readings? Taken?"

Phantom analyzed his data. "Sort of like Taken. Much less organized. Super weird. I don't think we should get close. Bullets may not work on them."

This worried Charon. Bullets affected everything - so of course, this had to be the single enemy that ignored metal projectiles.

"Do you think my Light would affect them?"

"Like if you punched them with a fire fist?" Phantom laughed. "Why not? Valis is using a Light laser. If Rasputin thinks Light will kill these things, then we'd better pay attention."

"How do we know we should kill them, though?" Charon said. "If it's some unknown species, shouldn't we try to learn about them, instead of exterminating them out of hand?"

"What are you, a warlock?" Phantom teased. "Sure. Try talking to them. I'll resurrect you afterwards."

They arrived at the pyramid a while later. The only sign of Valis was a discarded sparrow and a hole cut in the pyramid's side. A steady coldness flowed out of the pyramid's interior, cooling the already chilly desert. A few feet from the door floated a being.

It looked like a whirlwind of black smoke. It seemed to be about eight feet tall, but its smoky substance constantly changed shapes, making size hard to determine. A thicker patch of smoke halfway up seemed to be its face, or brain, or sensory organ. This patch faced Charon and Phantom no matter where the rest of it moved.

"Ugh," Phantom muttered. "The thing feels like Darkness, itself."

"Hello?" Charon said uncertainly. The sight of the thing made goosebumps rise on her arms under her armor, but she had to give it the benefit of the doubt. It might not be hostile. Maybe. "Are you friendly?"

The thing echoed her voice back at her. "Are you friendly?"

"Weird," Phantom whispered. "It altered the frequency of the echo."

"Are you friendly?" the thing repeated in Charon's voice. "Are you friendly?"

"It's learning," Phantom hissed. "It's altering frequencies with each repetition. Kill it, quick."

"Arrrrrrre yoooooooou," the thing drawled. A modulation crept into the sound that drilled into Charon's brain. Her eyes tried to roll back in her head.

"Charon!" Phantom yelled.

His voice cut across the alien's sound. Charon dashed forward, even though her eyes would barely stay open, and punched the thicker smoke patch with a fist wreathed in flame.

Her fist encountered resistance, as if she had punched a thick cobweb. The smoke collapsed on itself and fell to the ground, looking like a tiny bundle of black filaments. Bits of it clung to her hand, slowly burning away in her Light.

"Ugh," she exclaimed, shaking her hand. Her head cleared, and she blinked. "I think I got it. What was it doing to me?"

"I don't know," Phantom muttered. "Definitely learning, though. I don't want to go in that pyramid. There's thousands more."

"Tell Sakura not to talk to them."

Phantom tried. "I can't detect her signal. The Darkness is so thick, she and Valis are completely cut off."

Charon gazed at the doorway anxiously.

* * *

The inside of the pyramid was made of the same black material as the outside. The floors and walls were made from an open honeycomb grid, allowing the wispy aliens to pass through in any direction. Jin, however, had to pick his way through the bigger holes and avenues in the honeycomb, trying not to slip through the floor and fall Light only knew how far.

His Light laser cut through the smoky aliens like a blowtorch through paper. But they crept up behind him and settled over him in layers, blinding him, numbing his senses. He had to constantly fight free and hose down his attackers with Light. The Aestivalis was the only reason he was still alive, because the mere presence of the wraiths annulled his ability to use the Light.

Sakura rode along in phase, sending map data to his HUD, acting as his eyes with her scans. Infrared showed nothing in this cold, dark place, so she had to operate on sonar.

As soon as they crossed the threshold, she lost touch with the Traveler. Her own Light dimmed. It made her sick and spacey. Sometimes she couldn't read her own scans. Sometimes she thought she'd lost Valis, even though she was phased inside his armor. Sometimes she was so starved for Light, she considered throwing herself in front of his laser.

Sakura lost track of time. Had they been here for hours? Days? Weeks? She consulted her internal clock and found that it had been half an hour.

"Thirty minutes," she said with an unhappy giggle. "Thirty minutes of hell, Valis. I don't feel so good."

"Keep talking, then," Jin snapped.

Around him, the wraiths echoed, "Keep talking, then. Keeeep taaaaaaalking."

"Light!" Sakura said to his mind. "Don't speak aloud! They're changing the frequency of your voice."

"I hate these things!" Jin thought to her. "They're turning my voice into some weird chant. Eat this!" He slashed his laser through them and silenced them. But all around, throughout the pyramid, other wraiths had picked up the sound and were repeating it to each other.

"What would they do with loud music?" Sakura said.

"Let's not find out," Jin replied. "How're you holding out? Not dead yet?"

"No," she replied, "but I feel so strange. Like I'm flying all around and upside down and I can't see very well. And it's so dark and cold."

"I hear you there," Jin replied. "This cold is eating straight through me. And this darkness is like walking through a curtain. I think I feel it dragging at me, sometimes." He fought off another cloud of wraiths.

Sakura found his spark, where it burned cold inside him, and guarded it with her own. She may be wigging out from Light suppression, but she'd stand by her Guardian to the end.

After a while, she realized she was talking again, her muddled thoughts tumbling into Jin's head in no particular order. "I hunted you for so many years, Valis. I think they'd killed you with the Aestivalis. Your body was cut in half. It took a while to rebuild you. I should have realized that you were meant to operate it when I reassembled your insides, but resurrection is a Light thing, and I don't really think about it. Besides, the Aestivalis is brilliant. These crystals, now. They channel Light. Not right now, of course. This Darkness is so deep. Deep like the Deeps. Do you think these wraiths came from the Deeps? Or do they only feed on it?"

"Sakura," he said as he blasted the laser through the floor, down into the pyramid for what seemed like miles. "It's all right. I know you're sick."

"I'm not sick," Sakura replied. "I'm drunk. Isn't that funny? Ghosts can't drink but they can be drunk. Do you remember when that sniper shot you in the head? I felt that. Did I tell you? I don't think I did. It was nasty."

Jin halted in his battle against the wraiths, his purple eyes staring at nothing. "Shot in the head," he muttered. "I think I ... I remember that."

"I hope you remember," Sakura said, drifting from thought to thought. "I want you back. Rasputin stole you, turned you into Jin. But you were Valis. It's funny. I don't mind you as Jin. I just wish you weren't so cold. Valis was warm and kind. But Valis was afraid of you, Jin."

"I was afraid of me?" Jin said. "Sounds like I'd turned completely soft." But he sounded troubled.


	10. Chapter 10: Valis and Jin

More wraiths converged on them, invisible in the darkness, detectable only by the ripples of cold that moved with them. Sakura tracked their energy for Jin's HUD. He killed them by touch. But the wraiths had turned his voice into a chant, the sound changed until it barely sounded like a human voice. It had been pitched up, warped, modulated into a weaponized sound. As the noise increased, Jin's reaction time began to slow.

"They're experimenting," Sakura said. "They're studying us. Do they even care how many you've killed?"

"Doesn't look like it." Jin killed more, burning them to oblivion with the Aestivalis. "What do you think they'll do to me?"

"Best case scenario?" Sakura replied. "Kill you. Worst case? They'll crack us open and peel out our consciousness."

Jin swung in a circle, slashing the laser up and down. "It's taking longer to kill them, Sakki! Advice, please!"

He'd called her Sakki. She watched the wraiths beginning to absorb his Void Light, and all she could think about was that little pet name. Maybe he was beginning to remember. Maybe she could get her Valis back.

"Switch to Arc Light," she told him. "Ions. Electricity. Lightning. Think about those."

In mid-sweep, the laser changed from purple to brilliant blue. Lightning crackled along the laser, spreading across the honeycomb structure wherever it touched. Wraiths fizzled and died. The Light illuminated teeming hordes of them. _Cockroaches_ , Sakura thought. _Exactly like cockroaches_.

"That's more like it!" Jin exclaimed. "Eat lightning, bastards!"

Sakura scanned their surroundings, trying to map the labyrinthine space inside the pyramid. "Jin, I'm detecting an open space ahead of us. Be careful."

"What kind of open space?" he panted, brushing black filaments off his armor and helmet.

Sakura tried to measure it. Surely her sensors were wrong because of the lack of Light. She scanned again and again. "It has a border of two miles. That's as far as my scan can reach without Light. But how does this pyramid hold that much volume?"

"What are you talking about?" Jin said, frying wraiths and trying to silence their resonating wailing.

"This space up ahead," Sakura said, questioning her own sanity. "It's bigger than the pyramid."

"That's not possible," Jin said. Then he entered the space.

The honeycomb floor ended. Before them was a vast, rippling ocean of black water. Jin fired his laser across it. The light disappeared into the distance, as if he'd fired into space. There were no walls.

"What the hell," Jin breathed. "This pyramid has an ocean in it. How - what-"

"It's the Deeps," Sakura whispered, trying to hide in phase, then realizing she was already phased. "The Traveler is seven stars enclosed. This pyramid encloses the Deeps. Valis, run. We have to get out of here, if we still can!"

He doubled back, catching the terror in her voice. "Why? What's so bad about this place?"

"The Darkness and the Deeps are the same thing," Sakura said shakily. "It drowns Light like the bottom of the sea or the farthest reaches of space. If I'd known what was in here, I'd never have let you enter."

"Rasputin ordered me to!" Jin snapped. "Not like I had a choice!"

"Rasputin can jump off a cliff!" Sakura retorted. "This pyramid encloses the Deeps, and we don't stand a chance! We can't fight the whole of the Darkness alone! Do you know what lives in there?"

Jin fired upward, trying to hit the ceiling. There was none. But the flash of the laser illuminated more wraiths rising from the black water like steam. There was no end to them.

This fight could not be won.

Jin backtracked into the honeycomb structure, fighting every step of the way. But the wraiths had changed the frequency of their sound once more. Jin halted, confused, disoriented. "Sakki, where's the exit?"

"That way," she replied, flagging his map. "All we have to do is find the outer wall and you can cut your way out."

"I can't win," he confessed as he fled, firing the lightning laser. "I've never picked a fight I couldn't win, but I can't beat this."

"You didn't pick this fight," Sakura retorted. "Rasputin did. Let him deal with these monsters, if he thinks he can fight the Deeps. This is a job for the entire Vanguard, not just you."

"Keep talking to me," Jin said. "You keep me from listening to their noise. What other things did we do together?"

"We toured the Omolon weapons foundry," Sakura said. She described it in detail, sometimes having to shout above the noise of the wraiths.

Talking kept her from having to watch as Jin's cold spark began to dim. The Aestivalis was taking its toll.

* * *

Jin almost remembered the things the robot girl was talking about. They floated in his mind, ethereal as the wraiths themselves, just out of reach. Again, he had that sensation of living two parallel lives. If he could just merge back together, he remember everything and be whole again.

He didn't admit to himself how the wraiths frightened him. He was Jin, covert operative. He'd faced more dangers than any other operative and had destroyed enemies many times more powerful than himself. But this palpable Darkness, and these awful ghostly things, struck at his psyche on a primal level. All human beings feared the unknown. It was one of the deepest survival mechanisms, buried in the brain stem. On the surface, he mocked the Darkness and the beings that swirled within it. But the depths of his being shuddered in constant horror. Seeing them emerging from that black sea sent shivers of panic through him. He controlled himself with iron strength born of long training, but there was still that part of himself that wanted to run away, screaming.

He clung to Sakura's voice, her every word. She was so calm and sweet. He felt like he'd known her for years, somehow. Her chatter about making friends with Charon was light years distant from this black pit. It gave him the courage to keep fighting.

He followed her nav point on his map and cut his way through clouds of wraiths. Sometimes he thought he was hacking his way through dense cobwebs. Their black filaments settled on him until he was coated in what looked like piles of hair. He shook it off with a shudder.

Slowly, the Aestivalis began to lose power. Or was it himself who was losing strength? The laser no longer burned the wraiths like it had. The lightning didn't reach as far. "Sakura," he panted, "they're resisting again."

"Switch to solar," she replied. "Think about fire, and the sun. Golden and powerful and hot."

He did, and the laser changed to brilliant orange. Sparks and flickers of fire licked off it. The wraiths screeched their noise still louder as they shriveled and died. His own voice echoed back at him. "Keep talking, then! Keeeeeeeep taaaaaaalking theeeeeeeen."

How could they beat these things? There had to be a way. He had the Aestivalis plugged into his life force, for crying out loud. The trouble was that it was a concentrated beam, when he really needed bombs. Wide areas of destruction. Kill all the wraiths at once. Maybe even wipe out that ocean or whatever it had been. Some instinct told him that the space inside the pyramid wasn't truly inside it, but angled in from some other dimension. Whatever technology or magic that held it there probably wouldn't respond well to very large bombs.

With one part of his mind, he listened to Sakura. But a different corner of his mind - the logical, machine part - was tuned to Rasputin. He hadn't heard from the Warmind since entering the pyramid, but that meant nothing. Rasputin was probably waiting for a report.

"Aestivalis reporting in," he said.

"Acknowledged," Rasputin replied in Russian. The signal was a little fuzzy, but it got through whatever interference the pyramid put out.

"Mission failed," Jin said. "Pyramid generating hostiles as quickly as I can kill them."

"Define enemy generation."

Jin explained about the wraiths, how they acted, and how they emerged from the ocean of darkness. Rasputin listened in silence.

"I'm retreating," Jin finished. "I'm tiring, and the Aestivalis is weakening."

"Processing report. Standby."

He switched his attention back to Sakura. She was still talking in a wandering, confused way. "Then I erased the memory stick, and we gave it to Zavala. Do you think that was the right thing to do? The Vanguard ought to know about this place and the Aestivalis. It's all too big to keep to ourselves. I don't feel good, Valis. Jin."

"We're almost there," he told her, growing alarmed at how weak she sounded. "Hang in there."

"I'm hanging," Sakura replied. "I need Light. You need Light. I hope getting out of here solves that. All we've done is stir these things up and let them loose."

"I think Rasputin is working on it. He's-"

Rasputin interrupted his thought. "Protocol Deep Sky proceeding to stage three. Exit pyramid and standby for further instructions."

 _What were the other two stages?_ Jin thought. _Finding me and hooking up the Aestivalis?_

"He's going to bomb it, isn't he?" Sakura said. "That's what his warsats are for."

"Probably."

Jin spotted light in the darkness. A second later, he burst out into the blinding sunlight of a Martian afternoon.

"Valis!" exclaimed a female voice. "You're alive!"

Jin squinted around and saw the woman in black armor he had shot at earlier. Guardian Charon, Sakura had called her. His friend. She held a rifle in one hand, and a fiery hammer made of Light in the other. Black filaments covered the ground from wraiths she had killed.

For a second, he had a vivid memory of watching her dance with her ghost. He almost put the two halves of himself together - but couldn't quite do it. Instead, he staggered to a nearby boulder and sat down. His synthetic muscles ached.

"Alive, barely," he said. "Charon, right? Sorry I shot you back there." He held out a hand and summoned his ghost. Sakura appeared and rested in his metal palm, her blue eye flickering. She gazed up at him pitifully.

"What happened?" Charon asked. "How did you get out?"

"Walked," Jin replied. "It's full of wraiths. They're coming out of some ocean inside there. Rasputin's working on plan B at the moment."

He gazed down at Sakura. He had to protect her. But why was that important? He almost remembered.

Charon eyed him cautiously. "Who are you, again?"

"I'm trying to remember," Jin replied, still gazing at his ghost. He'd cleaned her shell himself. He'd given her his favorite girl's name, which meant he was very fond of her. So many memories, all flitting through his head like birds, glimpsed and gone, only to reappear again.

More wraiths flowed out of the pyramid's opening. Charon laid into them with her Light hammer. "Well, remember faster! These things are getting more aggressive!"

"Are you feeling better?" Jin thought to Sakura.

"So cold," she whimpered. "We're still at the edges of the Light suppression field. And your spark is cold. I'm freezing to death."

"How can I warm up my life force?" he thought to her.

"You have to find Valis," she whispered.

He wanted to shout, "That's what I'm trying to do!" But he couldn't yell at this poor little robot, so helpless in his hand.

In the other side of his mind, Rasputin's terrifying modulated voice said, "New instructions. Use Aestivalis to perforate the pyramid at these locations. Perforations must be two meters across."

Sakura saw him listening. "Rasputin?"

"Yeah, he says to blast holes in the pyramid. Guess we're not done yet."

"More holes?" Charon exclaimed, overhearing. "That'll let the wraiths out in swarms!"

"Best not to question the god-AI," Jin said, heaving himself to his feet. "First hole, this way."

He plodded around the side of the pyramid, Charon trailing him anxiously. To his surprise, the pyramid had only three sides. He activated the solar laser and began cutting a hole in the black material, where Rasputin had indicated. But halfway through, the laser began to flicker out. Jin lowered the gun barrel and stood there, panting.

"What's wrong?" Charon asked.

"I'm so tired," Jin muttered. "Used up all my Light fighting wraiths." He looked at Sakura in his other hand. She blinked up at him and didn't move.

Charon stood there, gripping her rifle and biting her lip. "Do you think ... would it be possible to use my Light?"

Jin gave her a sharp look. "Stick you full of probes? It'll mess you up inside."

"I'm a Guardian," she said fiercely. "I'll recover. If Rasputin thinks we can win doing this, then I'm going to make sure it gets done."

Jin looked down at the eight wires plugged into his torso. He gingerly unplugged two. They were attached to copper needles three inches long. "This ought to be enough," he said, holding them up. "With both of us powering the Aestivalis, it'll take the load off me."

Charon's eyes widened a little at the sight of the needles, but she unbuckled her chest plate. "Do it, then."

Her ghost appeared and watched anxiously.

Jin stepped up, measured where the probes had been inserted in the sides of his chest, then slid the needles between Charon's ribs.

She bit off a groan of pain. Her ghost scanned the spot where the wires were plugged in. "Right in the liver, Valis. Did it have to be there?"

"Better than than her heart or lungs," Jin retorted. He pulled the trigger. The Aestivalis laser flashed bright and powerful once more. "Dang, girl, you got Light."

He resumed cutting the hole, Charon standing there with her eyes shut. When the hole was open, Jin put an arm around her and guided her to the next spot, then the next. Charon didn't speak, saving all her concentration for surviving the pain. Her ghost couldn't heal her as long as the needles remained in the wounds.

Wraiths billowed out of each hole like black smoke. Their ghosts prudently phased, but the wraiths swooped down on the Guardians. Jin had to burn them with his laser, protecting them both, because Charon couldn't move.

"A protector," Sakura murmured in his mind. "This is what it means to be a Titan."

More memories flickered through his mind. Hanging out with other Titans, then playing Crucible matches with them on his team. Doing patrol duty, pacing the tops of the walls, watching over the Last City.

He had cared about these things very much. As he worked, he thought about the memories without thinking about them, sort of feeling his way into them from the side.

He'd cared. And he'd feared the part of himself that didn't care. For a brief time, after his resurrection, Valis was the person he used to be - before the NSA, and Numin Tor, and decades of covert operative work had cauterized his conscience. Rasputin had rolled Valis back to Jin. But Jin had once been Valis, when he had been young and idealistic, out to save the world.

He had never stopped being Jin or Valis. Both men were separated only by time.

As this revolutionary thought crossed his mind, he looked down at Sakura in his hand. She was the key to his immortality, yes, but that wasn't the only reason he should protect her.

He protected her because he cared.

The little blue eye blinked up at him, focusing on his face. "Jin," she whispered. "Valis. Which are you?"

"Both," he told her decisively.


	11. Chapter 11: Grant us Light

Valis carved another hole in the pyramid with focused ferocity. As he did, the realization of where he was and what he was doing trickled in.

He was on Mars. Mind-regressed by Rasputin. He'd burned all his Light on the Aestivalis, the weapon he had destroyed. But while stealing the data, he had run across news of the Mark Two ... and been killed by it shortly afterward. Even before the Traveler, humanity had discovered the energy that was Light and were weaponizing it.

His ghost was spent. Charon, the Titan girl he liked, was suffering at his side, giving up her Light to the vampire Aestivalis.

He understood this from a distance, as Jin. And he understood it from the inside, as Valis. The shocking horror of the situation slammed him so hard, his knees went weak. _What am I doing? I shot Charon, and she's still working as my teammate? And, oh Traveler, I'm about to lose Sakura._ He clutched her close in one hand and worked the Aestivalis with the other.

Each new hole let wraiths out of the pyramid in clouds. They circled the Guardians, swooping in to suck Light out of them. Valis blasted them when this happened, but it slowed the process of drilling holes.

By the time they had circled the pyramid and cut every hole Rasputin had requested, Charon's Light was giving out, too. Sakura had gone silent, too weak to talk anymore, but her eye still met Valis's whenever he looked at her.

"Rasputin," Valis said, "perforations are complete."

The Warmind replied, "Retreat to these coordinates. Standby."

"We have permission to run," Valis said. He gently pulled the probes out of Charon's side and stuck them back into himself. She groaned and stood still with her teeth bared as her ghost healed her. Then she followed Valis toward his stolen sparrow, still pale. She had her ghost summon her own sparrow, and the two Guardians fled the pyramid and the wraiths.

"We are in transit," Valis reported.

"Standby," Rasputin replied.

Valis looked down at Sakura as he drove. "Doesn't Light recharge?"

She couldn't answer.

He was pretty sure it did, especially once they got away from the suppression field. He needed his Light, his ghost, and his teammate. He'd come perilously close to losing all of them, due to Jin's stupid ego and Rasputin's cutthroat logic.

"Checkpoint reached," Valis announced, slowing to a halt.

"Protocol Deep Sky phase four initiated," Rasputin said. "Utilize shield to ensure survival."

"With what Light?" Valis yelled aloud. "You just made me spend every last flicker, you son of a bitch!"

"What's he want?" Charon said wearily, pulling up beside him.

"Shields," Valis said. "I have zero Light left for that."

Charon dismounted from her sparrow. "I'll create one. Stay close." She swayed as she spoke, exhausted. Valis caught her elbow and steadied her. She looked into his purple eyes for a long second. "Are you Jin? Or Valis?"

"Valis," he replied firmly. "Jin is part of who I am. But I choose to be Valis."

Charon slowly smiled, her weary eyes brightening a little. "I'm glad to hear that." Then she faced the distant pyramid, drew a deep breath, and flung out her arms. A blue dome shield appeared over them.

And just in time. A column of fire fell from the sky - fire in chunks, like burning meteors. It plunged through the holes in the pyramid, each fireball landing with nano-precision.

Smoke billowed out of the pyramid in greenish-black clouds. The wind carried it away from the Guardians. Valis watched warily. "I don't see why we need the shield. The fire's staying inside the-"

The pyramid exploded.

For a split second, Valis saw white cracks snake through the pyramid's face, following the geometric etchings. It occurred to him that the pyramid was meant to unfold along those lines. Then the pyramid vanished in a flash of light that scorched his optics and sent pain through his head. He whirled away from it and sheltered Sakura against his chest.

"I don't think I can hold it!" Charon cried, struggling to keep the shield going.

"I'm doing all I can!" her ghost cried. "May the Traveler grant us Light!"

Valis clenched his jaw, reached inside himself for the last remains of his Light, and slammed his own bubble shield over the top of Charon's.

The explosion's shockwave hit their twinned shields. Black dust and smoke enveloped them, blasting over and around the shields like a blizzard of smoke and dust. The ground shook until Valis's teeth rattled. Huge chunks of debris struck Valis's outer shield. He groaned, the impact jarring him to the core, and his shield failed. He sank to one knee, Sakura in one hand.

More debris plowed into Charon's shield. She gasped and cried out, doubling up. Her shield failed, too. Now nothing stood between them and the deadly storm of rock and metal.

Valis forced himself to his feet. He pushed Charon down and shielded her with his body. The Aestivalis armor was thick and heavy. Inside it, he was an Exo. He could take more punishment than Charon could.

As this thought crossed his mind, he remembered Sakura yelling at him, "You're human, too! All these synthetic organs work just like a human body! Blast you, Valis -"

Debris struck him in the back, rocks and boulders. He grunted and braced himself. All he could do was shelter his ghost and his teammate. He held Sakura's eye against his chest, protecting the delicate lens. With his other arm, he covered the back of Charon's head.

He never saw the giant slab coming. It fell out of the sky, a huge black chunk of the pyramid's outer wall, still engraved with geometric shapes. It hit the ground, rolled on its edge like a ten-foot-tall coin, then fell sideways onto the Guardians.

Valis was crushed into Charon by the slab's several tons of dead weight. The air left his lungs in a cry. He had just wits enough to jerk Sakura out of the way of being squashed between his chest plate and Charon's back - then the slab settled, pressing inexorably downward, snuffing out his life.

* * *

Sakura felt it happen. She knew she must phase or die in the next second. She drew strength from Valis and managed to slip into phase in a swirl of blue Light.

Phantom was phased, too. "No!" he was crying. "No, no! It killed them! Charon, I can't move the slab!" He flew in agitated circles. "If I resurrect her, she'll die again! My Guardian, what do I do?"

Sakura hung limply in phase, too spent to do more than watch Phantom's frantic grief. Her Guardian was dead, too, and she lacked the strength to raise him.

Outside, the dust began to settle. No more debris rained down. Only a smoking hole in the desert remained of the black pyramid.

But the Light suppression field was gone, too.

Sakura felt her contact with the Traveler once more. Light trickled into her core. She closed her eye and basked in it. "Phantom," she whispered. "Rest."

"Rest?" he shrieked. "My Guardian is crushed beneath a chunk of evil pyramid! I can't move it! You can't move it! What do we do?"

"Transmat them, idiot!" Sakura snapped. "You can move your Guardian from place to place. I'm just ... too empty right now."

Phantom's spark stood still. Embarrassment radiated from him. "Oh. Right. Why didn't I think of that?" He zipped to Charon and hovered over her spark.

Sakura flew to Valis. His spark burned bright and warm again. He'd found himself somewhere along the way. Sakura cuddled it with her own. "Sweet Guardian," she whispered to his soul. "Rasputin couldn't destroy you, no matter how he tried. I knew you were strong. I'll raise you in a moment." She let herself rest, drawing strength from Valis and from the Traveler - wonderful, generous Light. Slowly she revived.

"Our Guardians are crushed together," Phantom said. "We'll have to transmat them both at the same time to free them."

"I think I have the energy, now," Sakura said. "At the count of three."

The two ghosts reduced the bodies of their Guardians to information and moved them free of the slab. There they translated the information back into matter, dropping the corpses on the desert sand. Then each ghost poured resurrection Light into their Guardian.

Valis and Charon awoke, gasping. Valis scrambled to his feet, looking around wildly. "That chunk of wall! How did ...?"

"Transmat," Sakura said wearily.

"Oh, right." Valis lifted her in both hands. "Are you all right?" he whispered. "You couldn't even talk."

"I'm recharging," she whispered back, blinking up at his glowing violet eyes. "Please say we're done fighting."

"We're done," he whispered.

Valis turned to Charon, who was slowly climbing to her feet. "Are you all right? I was trying to protect you and I killed you, instead."

"It wasn't your fault," Charon said, pulling off her helmet and raking her fingers through her hair. "It's a good thing we're both Titans. Anybody else would have died long before this. And we only died because half the pyramid fell on us. Ugh! I hate dying." She scooped up Phantom, as Valis had done with Sakura, and whispered to him.

Valis looked down at his ghost. "Can you do me a favor?"

She emoted a smile. "Yes, Guardian?"

"Shut down the part of my brain that talks to Rasputin. I never want to hear from him again."

Sakura flew around his green, metal head, playing her scan beam across it. Tampering with a Guardian's brain was an ethical line ghosts normally didn't cross. But, Sakura told herself, Rasputin had already tampered with Valis. She was simply setting it right.

She located a program with Rasputin's headers and erased it from Valis's memory. Then she closed down a lot of security proxies that had been opened in his software.

"I think you're secure," she announced. "He'd hacked you pretty good."

Valis made a rude gesture in the direction of the Clovis Bray facility. Then he and Charon summoned their sparrows and headed for Charon's ship.

* * *

The Vanguard flew into a storm of excitement over the Aestivalis. Engineers from the major weapons manufacturers were called in to study it. Valis, himself, was also studied closely, since he was essentially half the weapon.

Rasputin sent no more spies, but that was only because Ana Bray negotiated with him. Zavala was not happy with the idea of the Warmind hacking Exos. Neither were the entire Exo population. For several weeks after this, a number of software patches circulated on the nets that purported to shield Exo minds from infiltration.

Charon caught a bit of spotlight, too, when Valis explained how she had helped power the Aestivalis. But mostly she stayed out of it. She had nightmares about the wraiths, and kept imagining she saw their filaments all over her armor, floor, and furniture.

The Vanguard kept the intelligence about the pyramid and wraiths very quiet. But the Consensus had many late-night meetings, debating a course of action should more of its kind appear someday. The news of the Aestivalis made a suitable smokescreen. After all, the mother of all trace rifles, stolen from Rasputin, made a good story.

* * *

A month later, Charon met Valis by accident at the Tower's ramen shop. They were both standing in line, recognized each other, and exchanged a fist bump.

"How's it been?" Valis asked her.

Charon shrugged. "Can't complain. Getting ready to ship out to Venus in a few days. You?"

He shrugged. "Let's grab a table and I'll tell you."

They took their ramen to a lonely table far back under the Tower awning. Charon studied Valis as they sat down. His green metal skin looked the same as ever, but he moved gingerly, as if favoring an unseen wound.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

He waved a hand. "Don't worry about me. The engineers have been poking around, trying to figure out how the Aestivalis connects to my Light. My ghost has to heal me every time."

"No thanks to them," Sakura said, appearing in a flash of light. "I'm so sick of my Guardian being hurt."

"Me too," Valis said. He lowered his voice and leaned toward Charon. "So I'm joining Ikora's Hidden. Keep it secret."

Charon smiled. "I thought they only hired warlocks?"

"They take anybody who volunteers," Valis said, stirring his soup. "I was covert ops for so many years, that's what I want to keep doing. Ikora agreed to hire me on. I've got an assignment tomorrow. Glad I ran into you, because we may not see each other again for a while."

Charon nodded. Mixed feelings rose within her - a little sadness, and a little relief that this exceptionally dangerous man was leaving her life.

"I wanted to apologize," Valis blurted. "For burning you with the laser. I can't even plead insanity."

Charon flexed her arm, remembering the searing pain. "No apologies needed. Rasputin screwed you up."

"He only brought that part of me to the surface," Valis said bitterly, staring at his food. "He didn't change anything. That part is still there. That's why I'm taking this next assignment. It'll be better for the Vanguard if I drop out of sight for a while."

"Do what you have to do," Charon said. "Maybe keep in touch once in a while?"

"Maybe," Valis said with a grin. "We Titans stick together."

"We do," Charon replied. "Take care of yourself, Valis. And watch your back. I've heard stories ..." She trailed off, unsure how much to say.

Valis chuckled. "Believe me, I know. I used to work in that field, remember? Don't worry. I'm doing this in service of the Vanguard and humanity. A lot goes on in the intelligence field that nobody knows about."

They ate their ramen together, not saying much. As they finished and returned their dishes, Valis said, "See you around, Charon. Take care of your ghost."

"I will," she said, wondering what prompted this.

Valis summoned Sakura and gazed at her a long moment. "I'm still learning to care for you," he told her softly. "Please be patient with me."

"We have all the time in the world," Sakura replied. "I'm yours forever."

Charon watched them depart with a small smile. Valis would do just fine.

The end


End file.
